


Reverie in Green

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (specifically apple farming), Bars and Pubs, Drinking, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Getting Together, H/D Cluefest 2021, HP: EWE, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Nature, POV Switches, Romance, Rural England, Slow Burn, angst & intrigue but make it cottagecore, farming, one (1) mischievous dog, supportive & healthy friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 51,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Draco just wants to get away; Harry just wants his dog back.There's a small wooden bridge in the middle, somewhere, curved over a stream that never stops flowing. All they have to do is cross it.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 106
Collections: H/D Cluefest 2021





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ENDLESS thanks to my betas m, a, and e for doing such a fantastic job looking over this bad boy! i genuinely could not have done it without you all. i would send each and every one of you a gift basket full of chocolates & roses, but unfortunately all i can offer you for now is my love and gratitude ❤️❤️ extra kudos to the stellar mods for making this fest possible and for dealing with my long emails that were lacking in both grace and punctuation—you're truly my heroes.
> 
> to my dear prompter, trishjames: we don't know each other, but the moment i saw your prompt i knew i had to grab hold of it before anyone else did. i sincerely hope you enjoy the fire of a fic that your spark ignited—i had so much fun writing it.
> 
> and, finally, a friendly disclaimer: i don't support j.k. rowling in any way shape or form, and this story is not meant for those who do. to my lovely trans folk out there: i love you, i'm here for you, you matter. thank you :)

The door closed behind Draco with a shudder, rattling the unlit light fixture in the center of the ceiling. The foyer was dark; watery light slanted in from the thin window next to the even thinner coat rack, barren like an elm tree in late winter. Everything smelled slightly of dust and cedar. A stairway was fixed straight ahead, creaky-looking and sunken, its banister coated in chipped white paint, looking like no one had touched it in years.

Draco’s shoes clicked subtly on the bare floor as he walked through the adjoining hallway, slowly taking in the drab beige wallpaper—faded and chalky, peeling towards the bottom—and the trampled carpet, patterned with stoic and sad-looking flowers. Somewhere ahead of him in the kitchen, a leather bag thumped against wood and a chair scraped loudly. 

“What do you think?” Pansy asked when Draco stepped through the arched entryway to the kitchen, knuckles white over the strap of his rucksack. There was dust on the dining table, dust on the countertops. Dust everywhere he looked. 

“I think it’s charming,” he said, voice fracturing the stale air. Beside him, Theo grunted under his breath. 

“Nicer than the last place we had.”

That was true. At least this place had furniture, ancient and allergy-inducing as it may be.

Greg was standing by a large bay window positioned over the sink, backlit by grey sunlight and casting a long, stretched shadow across the eggshell-coloured tiles. Tiles that probably used to be white, once upon a time. “Backyard’s nice,” he observed, leaning forward, hands clasped behind his back.

With a dull pang in his chest, Draco figured that’s how they’d refer to everything, now. Not horrible, not spectacular—just nice. Liveable; manageable.

He dropped his bag on the table next to Pansy’s with a thud and joined Greg by the window, trying to ignore the itch under his skin and the heavy feeling of melancholia suspended over his shoulders, threatening to collapse like an anvil on a thread. 

The backyard was—well. Overgrown, for one. Green, for another. Untamed and clearly unregulated. There were trees on all sides, blooming in rich shades of orange and yellow that staunchly reminded Draco of Wiltshire in autumn, of the manicured trees that had neatly lined the gravel drive of the Manor once upon a time. A small dirt path cut through the garden like an artery, crowded in by tall, swaying grass and budding wildflowers; in the near distance a fountain shaped like a mermaid gurgled faintly, her arms winding skyward like a ballet dancer. 

It was nice, he thought. _Just nice._

Pansy came up between the two of them and rested her sharp chin on Draco’s shoulder, arms settling around his waist, short hair brushing roughly against his cheek. “Home sweet home,” she declared, the words rolling off her tongue dully.

“Home sweet home,” Draco agreed.

* * *

The first time Harry’s dog went missing, someone broke into his house.

It wasn’t his fault, really—yes, maybe he should’ve stashed the spare key somewhere other than under the doormat, and yes, maybe he should’ve put better wards up around the house, but honestly? He couldn’t be bothered. The house on its own felt as secure as a prison—except it wasn’t like a prison at all. Not even a little bit. Quite the opposite, really.

It was protective in nature: a sturdy building with a solid foundation and walls that curved inward as if they were trying to shelter its innards from the outside world. On hot days in the summer, it would trap the sunlight inside and let it soak into the wood and stone, heating the floors and swelling the furniture. On cold days in the winter, it would fight the cold out like a ship battling a storm, hunkering into itself and battening down the hatches. It was comfortable and familiar, its cherry wood floors and exposed ceilings warm; safe. Harry felt protected here.

And yet—somehow—someone managed to break in. 

He was startled awake painstakingly early in the morning by the familiar thud of the front door and a voice shouting his name up the stairwell, loud and boisterous. 

“Harry? Harry, are you home?” 

He sat up stalk-straight in bed, pieces of his dream falling apart in front of him, the back of his head banging into the mahogany headboard and making his vision go a fuzzy shade of grey. “Christ,” he cursed aloud, raising a hand to rub gingerly at the base of his skull and blinking the dark blotches from his eyes. It took him an admittedly long moment to get a grip on his surroundings; the wavering image of his bedroom swam in the bright liquid light of the morning, the windows across the room glowing yellow and overexposed.

“Harry?” the voice came again, seeping up through the floorboards like bleeding honey. There was an ominous creak of wood followed by what sounded like footsteps, and Harry realised with delayed clarity that there was an intruder coming up the stairs.

Suddenly wide awake, he scrambled to untangle himself from his patterned bedsheets, adrenaline searing through him like a hot knife. It had been years since he’d felt that kind of panic—really, genuinely felt it—and now it came back to him so suddenly it was almost like it’d never left. “Phoebe!” he hissed at the lump of blankets at the foot of the bed, the usual nesting spot of his brown Sheltie. “Phoebe, intruder!” 

He wished he were surprised that the lump didn’t move, but he wasn’t; Phoebe was about the single laziest sheepdog on the planet, and she didn’t like to do things if there wasn’t a guaranteed reward. One of those things was, apparently, protecting her one and only owner from trespassers.

“Hey!” Harry tried again, stumbling as his feet landed on the cold wood floor. “Phoebe, you daft dog, wake up! Intruder!” 

The lump remained motionless, content to keep on snoozing. Harry wanted to scream at her, but he knew that would draw attention to his bedroom, if his bumbling footsteps hadn’t done so already.

“Harry?” The voice was at the top of the landing now, coming closer. 

A lump of dread the size of a bludger lodged itself in the back of Harry’s throat. Mind reeling, heart thumping, he fumbled for his wand on the nightstand and tried not to trip over the too-long legs of his flannel pyjamas. He was nearly a second too late, fingers closing around the rugged holly handle at the exact moment the door to his bedroom clicked and swung all the way open. 

He spun around, wand raised protectively, mouth open and beginning to curve around the word _“Expelliarmus”_ , when he came to a full stop.

“Harry—oh.”

Standing on the threshold between his bedroom and the darkened hallway, her long, floral-patterned maxi skirt brushing the floor, was Luna. 

Harry dropped his arm like a deadweight, relief crashing over him. “Jesus _Christ_ ,” he breathed, hand on his chest. “You scared me.”

“Did I?” she asked, gaze wide and blue, pinned on the wand in his hand. She didn’t seem nearly as fazed as most people would have, but then again, this was Luna. “Goodness, sorry about that. I didn’t mean to.”

Harry closed his eyes and tipped his head back for a fleeting moment, willing his pulse to slow back down. When he opened them again, he had to blink to adjust his eyes to the bright, rising light of the morning, then remembered faintly that he had glasses that would help with that. Dropping his wand back onto the nightstand, he fumbled around for them, hands trembling slightly as he jammed them onto his nose and waited for the blurriness to slide away. When it finally did, he refocused on Luna—or, rather, the intruder. 

She was half-leaning against the open door, one hand on the doorknob, the other wrapped around the frame; her hair was pinned back at the crown of her head with what seemed to be two coloured pencils, one blue and one yellow. A beige cardigan hung off her round shoulders and wrapped around her torso, unbuttoned at the top and tucked into the front of her skirt. She was certainly a sight for sore eyes—but she was also a sore sight for tired eyes. 

“Hello,” she said in that floaty way that only she could, smiling, shallow dimples creasing her pale cheeks.

“Hello,” Harry replied, shaking his head slightly to reorient himself, but he couldn’t quite shake all of the haze away. “What time is it? How did you get inside?”

“Half past six, last I checked. And I used the key under your doormat,” she answered easily, as if the key under the doormat was something she used every day. 

Harry blinked. Half past six in the _morning?_ “What?” he said incredulously, not quite believing her. “Six a.m.? But, how did you know—?”

“Everyone leaves a key under the mat, Harry,” she cut him off blithely. “It’s human nature at this point.” 

“I—yes, yeah, I know that. But—it’s—six _a.m_?”

Her smile deepened with amusement and she stepped across the threshold into the room, blonde hair catching the filtered light from the windows. It framed her face like a golden halo, her baby hairs almost translucent as they curled up around her temples. “Have you just woken up?”

Harry stared at her, unblinking. “Is that not obvious?” 

“I thought you might’ve, but it's always good to ask.” She came over to plop on Harry’s bedspread and folded her legs, mattress bouncing beneath her. She looked up at him, face open and bright. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Good morning.”

“You—” Harry blinked again, harder, re-disoriented. Jesus, what a morning. “Luna,” he restarted, trying his absolute best to sound polite. “You—not that you’re not welcome, or anything, but why are you here? At six in the bloody morning?”

“Half past six,” she corrected kindly.

“Half past six,” he echoed blankly.

“It’s Saturday, remember?” She leaned back on her palms, a corner of her cardigan slipping down her shoulder. She was wearing about fifteen or so necklaces, silver and gold clashing together and glinting around her neckline. “I came to help you with the orchard, like always. And to say hello to the little ones, of course!” Her back straightened suddenly, expression eager and hopeful. “Have they opened their eyes yet?”

“I, um.” Harry wobbled, and all at once his body decided that sinking back down onto the bed was the best thing to do in that moment. He loved Luna wholeheartedly, but it was far, _far_ too early for a conversation with her. He needed time to prepare for those—or at the very least a warning. “The, um, the chicks, you mean?”

“Yes!” Luna sat forward. “Last time I was here, their eyes weren’t open yet. They’d have opened by now, wouldn’t they?”

Harry reached up and scrubbed his hands down his face, still trying to process what time it was. He tried focusing on her question, but he felt a few steps behind; like he was a computer, lagging and buffering. His brain felt like it was nothing but a little spinning rainbow circle, going round and round, stuck in a loop. “I—Luna, they weren’t open last time because they were sleeping.”

She gasped. “No. Were they really?”

“Yes.” He dug his palms into the sockets of his eyes, seeing firecrackers bloom on the back of his eyelids. “It’s really Saturday? Already?”

“It is.” A pause. “Harry, are you feeling okay? You’re acting funny.”

He peeked through his fingers. “It’s six in the morning.”

“Half past six.”

He dropped his hands and stared at her pointedly. 

Her brows knit. “Am I being unhelpful?”

“Luna,” he sighed.

“I can leave if you’d like. I just woke up early today so figured I’d come meet you early, too.” She fell back on the bed, mattress bouncing again, and rolled her head to look at him. “Aren’t farmers supposed to wake up really early?”

“Not this farmer,” Harry said flatly.

“Hm.” She rolled back. “I suppose you’re not like most. You still want to go apple-picking today, don’t you?”

Harry blew air through his nose. “Yes, I do, just—not right now.”

“Would you like to go back to sleep?”

“Very much so.”

She smiled gently and reached out to pat his thigh. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”

“Luna,” he said again, “you were the one that stopped me in the first place.”

“Should I leave?”

Looking down at her, loose hairs fanned out around her face, her cheeks rosy and ripe with the glow of the morning, Harry couldn’t help but feel bad. “No,” he sighed, falling back next to her, knees knocking. “No, you don’t have to. But I really would like some more sleep—my day doesn’t start until seven at the earliest.”

“That’s alright.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “I could make myself busy for an hour or so. Does Phoebe need a walk? I could take her around the orchard.”

At the mention of Harry’s slumbering sheepdog, he snorted and shifted to look at the lump of blankets on the end of the bed. “If you can get her to wake up, I’m sure she’d love that.”

“Oh—Harry, that’s not Phoebe.”

“Huh?” He craned his neck. “It’s not?”

Luna reached a toe out and poked at the lump of blankets. Nothing happened.

“Oh my god,” Harry said, head thunking against the mattress as he let it fall back. “I'm losing my mind.”

Luna giggled, sunny, like a wind chime. “I saw her sniffing around the kitchen when I came in. I think she woke up before you did.”

“That little she-devil.” He turned weary eyes on Luna. “You wouldn’t mind taking her out?”

“Of course not! She’s a delight.”

“She’s a pain in the ass.”

Luna laughed and patted him again, this time on the forehead. Her fingers were cold and smooth to the touch. “Go to sleep, Harry.”

And, well, he couldn’t argue with that.

*

Later that morning, after stealing another tentative forty minutes of sleep and washing away the last of his fogginess in the shower, Harry padded down the creaking stairs to find that Luna had flung open all the windows in the kitchen despite the chilly autumnal draft. The screen door in the back was also propped open, looking out onto the backyard, all green and sodden with dew. The tittering sounds of goldfinches and cluck of hens crept through the windows like the tendrils of ivy crept around the sides of the house, some of them dipping inside through the gaps in the windowsills to escape the waxing sunlight and seek refuge in the shadows of the kitchen.

As Harry sidled up to the counter to begin fixing himself a pot of tea, he peered out into the backyard and took quick stock of the landscape. He spotted Luna just beyond the porch bent over the splintered wooden structure that housed Harry’s small collection of chickens, her yellow-blonde hair a beacon amid the deep greens and browns of the apple orchard. She was nearly hanging off the side of the henhouse, both arms reaching down into the hay-padded interior, one leg lifting behind her to keep her balance. She was still barefoot even in the wet, spongy grass. Harry felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. 

“Have you had breakfast?” he called to her through the window, leaning over the sink while the dented copper tea kettle began heating up next to him.

Luna looked up and around at him, bracing herself on the stripped wood, hair falling into her eyes. “No!” she called back.

Questioningly, Harry held up a spare mug so she could see it. “You want?”

She nodded vehemently, but the action almost made her keel over into the opening of the henhouse, so she stopped and steadied herself. “Yes, please!”

Harry snorted at her and shook his head lightly, not quite believing that this was his life. Now that he was fully awake, he could appreciate Luna’s energy in a way he couldn’t before; she seemed to light up the yard like she did every Saturday when she visited. She was about as welcome to the house as the fruit was to the trees; the walls brightened and the floorboards curved upward in a smile whenever she came around, as if the house was happy to see her. Harry didn’t blame it, even if she could be a bit much at times.

Beginning to feel the slight cold sifting into the kitchen, Harry waved his hand and wandlessly closed the windows that Luna had opened, only leaving the one over the sink alone so he could continue gazing out at the sprawling yard. The orchard was bright and perky, spread wide over the generous fifteen acres of land, crowded in by the surrounding woodland and rugged hills that peeked over the tips of the apple trees. Their branches reached high and beckoning towards the dull blue sky, shining glimpses of pink and yellow nestled amongst their cradles of leaves. The ground was riddled with fallen apples that Harry figured he’d have to clean up later before the squirrels got to them.

The kettle began to sing its high-pitched song, and he turned his attention to it and started fixing two generous cups of tea, adding a load of milk to his own while leaving Luna’s untouched because, somehow, she could stomach it plain. Mugs in hand—one dotted with little hand-painted daisies, the other shaped like a curling head of cabbage—he bumped the screen door open with his hip and came out onto the porch, calling for Luna to come and get hers. 

“One minute,” she said, flapping her hand and bending down further to coo at the small litter of newborn chicks nestled inside the safety of the henhouse. They’d hatched just the other week, and already Harry could hear their chirps all the way from the porch, loud and chipper. 

Happy to let Luna do her thing, Harry collapsed into one of the beige wicker rocking chairs and tucked into his own cup of tea, the rich steam curling white in the still blue daybreak. Despite the early sun blanketing the backyard with a warm, yellow sheen, the air was cold and damp, residual frost clinging to the wood railing of the porch. The faded metal bird feeders hanging from the cross beams creaked and swung faintly in the breeze.

“Hey, Luna,” he said after a slow moment, squinting slightly as he scanned the yard. “Where’s Phoebe?”

With some difficulty, Luna hauled herself out of the henhouse and followed his gaze, looking around at the flattened clearing. “Around here somewhere,” she said airily, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “I took her on the trail that loops around the herb garden, but she sort of wandered off when we got back.”

“Oh,” Harry said, mildly surprised. Phoebe didn’t usually wander off unless Harry was by her side, leading her through the winding rows of apple trees or down the packed dirt lane to the river at the bottom of the hill. She was a “grounded spirit,” according to Luna, one who went places and did things deliberately. Harry just thought that meant she was clever.

“Have you named the little ones yet?” Luna asked, changing the subject and breaking his train of thought. She was leaning back over the chicken coop, attention recaptured by the chattering baby birds. Since it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be pulled away from them anytime soon, Harry stood up from his rocking chair and brought Luna’s cabbage-shaped mug over to her so they wouldn’t have to strain their voices to talk.

“No, not yet,” he said, peeking into the open hatch. Inside, a small puddle of soft, yellow tufts wiggled around, their tiny needle-like beaks poking skyward. There were four of them, two mottled with specks of brown, the others with white highlights running down their backs. “Do you have any in mind?”

Luna tilted her head pensively. “Phoebe was named after a Greek goddess, wasn’t she?”

Harry nodded. “The goddess of light, I think.”

“Then these ones deserve to be goddesses, too.” Luna smiled, reaching out to stroke one of the tiny chicks on its tiny head. “This one seems like a Hecate, don’t you think?”

Harry honestly didn’t know, but he trusted her. “Sure,” he said before taking a sip of his tea. He swallowed and pointed. “What about that one?”

Luna considered, moving her delicate fingers to the other brownish chick. Her nails were painted orange and cerulean, chipped and mismatched. “Tyche,” she said decisively. “And the other two can be Paean and Circe.”

Harry grinned wide and fond, despite knowing next to nothing about Greek mythology. “Hello, Circe,” he whispered to the smallest of the lot, bending over to stroke his pointer finger down its delicate back. It fluttered its wings and shook its head, chirping pleasantly. Harry’s heart nearly melted out of his chest right there. “What’s she the goddess of?” he asked.

“Necromancy,” Luna said. “Paean is healing and Tyche is good fortune.”

“And Hecate is sorcery, right?”

“Yes!” Luna’s face lit up pleasantly, clearly surprised that he'd managed to remember something. “Have you been reading that book series I gave you for Christmas?”

“A bit,” he admitted, abashed. It was hard for him to get through dense novels, but the ones Luna had gifted him were written for teenagers and easy on his dyslexia because the font was so large. “I’ve only finished the first book, though.”

“Oh, isn’t it fascinating?” she gushed. “I had no idea Muggles knew so much about Hellenic polytheism.”

Harry felt like pointing out that Percy Jackson probably wasn’t the most accurate representation of Muggle knowledge about mythology would put a damper on her bright mood, so he didn’t. “Me neither,” he said feelingly, drawing his hand out of the chicken coop and wiping it on the front of his trousers. He looked at her decisively. “Should we get started?”

“Yes, yes, right. Apple-picking.” She drew her hands out, too, and brushed them off on her skirt, getting little bits of hay caught in the sheer material. Evidently, she’d forgotten about her cabbage-shaped mug of tea, as it was sitting untouched on the flat roof of the henhouse. “Will Nev be coming by today to help out as well?” she asked curiously.

“I have no idea,” Harry said. Neville’s appearances at the house were a lot more sporadic than Luna’s, who came at least every Saturday, sometimes staying the night. Neville just tended to show up whenever he felt like it. Not that Harry minded; he was a huge help with the orchard and the gardens, always teaching Harry a new trick that would help his squash grow faster or his apples stay ripe longer. Harry picked up Luna’s mug and swished the now-lukewarm liquid around. “You still want this?”

“Oh,” she said softly, then reached out to pluck it from him and take a large gulp. “Sorry, I forgot. Your chicks are distracting.”

“Clearly.” He smiled. When she finished, he took both mugs and deposited them back in the kitchen sink, ceramic rattling against metal, then grabbed his brown waxed jacket from the hook next to the door. “Are you going to put shoes on?” he asked through the screen, watching as Luna carefully transfigured her maxi skirt into flowy-looking trousers, cinched at the bottom so she could move around easier.

“Shoes are oppressive!” she called back, and really, Harry should’ve expected that, but he shook his head anyway. If she stepped on any mushy fallen apples, that was her problem.

After zipping up his jacket and tucking the ends of his trousers into his wellies, he beckoned Luna to meet him around the side of the house where the toolshed was. Leaning against the peeling, dilapidated clapboards were two adjustable ladders and a stack of woven baskets with cushions on the inside and a fabric strap for slinging over the shoulder. They grabbed one of each and hauled them together across the clearing to the first blooming grove of speckled trees, wet grass squelching under their feet. There were small puddles of week-old rainwater gathered at the roots of the trees, brown and foggy.

“I’ll take the trees over here?” Luna asked, dragging her ladder past Harry to a small grove facing East.

“Sounds good.” He stopped, propping his own ladder against one of the bigger trees. It was skewing towards the end of the harvest season, December looming dark and chilly right around the corner, so the branches weren’t as heavy with fruit as usual. They were still plentiful enough to fill up a couple of crates that could be shuttled to the farmers’ market in town, but the bulk of the orchard had already been harvested earlier that month—with Neville and Luna’s help, of course. Harry couldn’t imagine picking the whole crop on his own.

He started on the first tree with loose focus, using his bare hands to pluck the ripe, plump apples from their branches and drop them gently into the basket, so they wouldn’t bruise. 

It had taken him quite a long time to figure out the best way to harvest the apples when he first bought the property, back when he was all wide-eyed and reckless, aching to get out of the city. He hadn’t even been sure he would use the orchard when he bought it, since it used to be all sad and bent out of shape, the trees sagging and the fruit lacking. But now—after nearly two years of living here—Harry could say that he had more or less got the hang of it. He knew, now, what trees were the best to pick from, how to check if an apple was truly ripe, how not to bruise it after picking it. He knew how to turn those apples into apple juice, and apple fritter, and fruit salad, and apple pie. He was creating a small living for himself just based on the orchard, selling a few crates of fresh apples every month or so at a farmers’ market and donating the rest to London-based food banks that needed them. 

Of course, it hadn’t been easy. Back when he’d bought it off a haughty-looking real estate wizard, the slumping groves and old, fragile house had seemed unappealing at first glance. But then—almost by accident—Harry had fallen in love with the place. 

“Are you sure you want it?” the real estate wizard had asked, frowning as he looked up from his odd little clipboard. He’d shown Harry the property more out of obligation than anything else, since Harry’s only request was that he wanted to be “out of the way”, and Eastern Bedfordshire had seemed to fit that requirement quite nicely.

“Positive,” Harry had replied, running a hand down the splintered banister of the back porch and smiling privately. 

His infatuation with the house was undeniable; he could see past the mulchy lawns and faded wallpaper, the metal furniture in the yard crawling with weeds and ivy, the duck pond around the front that was so brown it was almost black. All he could see was potential—fifteen acres of potential. 

“Harry,” Hermione had said with the same exact frown the real estate wizard had. “You’ll be so far away from London. Are you absolutely sure?”

“Positive,” Harry had said again, frustrated this time. It wasn’t that far, anyway; only a single Floo stop or a ninety-minute drive in his dingy green Outback. He could visit London whenever he needed to. And it’s not like he needed to see Ron and Hermione every day to survive—he could do that on his own. Or, at least, he hoped he could.

He’d spent the better part of the last two years cleaning up the orchard and restoring the house to its former glory, replacing the caving roof with new shingles, varnishing the hardwood floors, stripping down the peeling wallpaper, repainting the walls in earthy shades of green and yellow. When he showed it to Ron and Hermione after the place was finally furnished, they’d smiled and complimented him dutifully—but there was something else underneath their words. Something painful that Harry didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

So he didn’t. 

He tried to keep up with them—he really did—but it was hard. Harder than most things he’d had to do. Harder than uprooting the rows of dead trees from the back ends of the orchard, harder than rewiring the electricity box, harder than slipping backward off the sloped edge of the roof and spraining his ankle. He tended to forget himself, sometimes, accidentally not talking to anyone while spending days pulling weeds from the vegetable garden or cutting back the overgrowth that crept in from the surrounding woodland. It was so easy to get lost for days in the depths of his orchard, and he’d forget to speak to people. Forget to respond to an owl, or Firecall someone back, or even shoot someone a text. 

But Harry wasn’t worried. Together, he, Ron, and Hermione had been through worse. So much worse. He knew that no matter how secluded Harry’s life got, he would always have their backs, and they would always have his. That’s how they worked.

After a while, though, he figured out that seclusion was a good thing for him. The best thing, even. By being alone out here on this wide, expansive stretch of nature, Harry began learning how to be happy on his own; how to live with himself and not criticise his every move, not beat himself up for things that were out of his control. His old Mind Healer, Eva, had applauded his choice to move out to the countryside when he told her about it.

“You’ve been living for other people for so long, Harry,” she’d said kindly, foot crossed over her knee, hands clasped in her lap. “It makes me proud that you’re learning how to live for yourself. It shows progress.”

Harry wasn’t sure what exactly constituted “progress”, but he trusted her, and part of him soared when he heard her say the word “proud”. It made him feel whole, and human. It made him feel real. When Harry told Eva this, her smile had wavered. 

“People don’t tell you they’re proud of you very often, do they?”

He hadn’t known what to say to that. “Sure they do,” he tried, sounding suddenly meek. It felt like a lie, but he wasn’t sure it was. 

“Can you name a recent time?” 

Harry couldn’t, so Eva had stood up and crossed the room to sit next to him on the dark grey couch in her office, looking earnest. “Harry,” she’d said, making eye contact. “I need you to know that I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your friends and family are, too, even if you don’t hear it often. I know they are.”

Like the house, Harry had accidentally fallen in love with Eva, too. But when he’d asked her out for a drink after their final session together, him standing in the doorway of her clean office, she’d just smiled sadly and shook her head. “It was a pleasure working with you, Harry. I truly wish you the best.”

And so Harry went home—his _new_ home, unpainted and unfurnished as it may be, but home nonetheless—and he learned how to live for himself. 

It was hard. But it was also inexplicably, unfathomably easy, and he supposed that was the charm of it. 

Ron and Hermione came over a lot when he first moved in, helping him pick out paint colors at the hardware shop ten minutes away, taking boxes of clothing and knick-knacks through the Floo from Grimmauld Place, bringing bags of takeout from Harry’s favorite Indian place in London and eating it on the bare wood floor in the living room. But then, after Hermione decided to go to grad school and Ron got a desk job at the Department of Magical Games and Sports, they started showing up less. They tried to make it once a week, at least, but then that dwindled down to once a month, and then once every two months, and eventually they only came when Harry invited them, which wasn’t very often. Not because he didn’t want to, just because he forgot to. 

The only other time one of them had shown up without an invite had been the week before the previous Christmas; Harry had heard a faint knock on his front door and opened it to find Hermione standing on the porch, cheeks smudged with wet mascara, arms wrapped around herself. 

“We broke up,” she’d said, voice cracking, and then Harry had enveloped her into his arms and stroked her hair, tight braids feeling course under his fingers. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he’d asked later on after guiding her inside and making her a cup of cocoa. She shook her head, so Harry let it be and went upstairs to make up the guest bed. She’d stayed with him for a full week, and Harry was happy to have her, but she wasn’t exactly in the right state of mind to be entertained; she’d just sat in front of the fire most of the time, staring at it, spaced out, some Muggle game show playing on the television. 

Harry hadn’t pressured her to talk despite his burning curiosity, and the most she ever said about it was after he'd found her crying on the floor of the downstairs loo, hands shaking, eyes wild. “I’m having a panic attack,” she’d informed him through tears, and Harry had sat next to her and held her hand, helping her count her breathing until her hands stopped trembling. 

“I hate that he can make me feel this way,” she’d said after the worst of the tremors had subsided, sounding defeated, leaning on Harry’s shoulder as the cold tiles bled through their clothes.

“I know,” Harry had replied, and it sort of felt like his own heart was breaking as he said it. 

Then, on Christmas Eve, another faint knock had sounded at the door, and Harry opened it to find Ron standing on the porch looking unrested and pale. 

“Is she here?” he’d asked, low and pleading.

Harry had been reluctant at first, thinking of Hermione’s shaking hands, but he couldn’t lie to Ron. Not like that. “Yes.”

And then Hermione had come up from behind Harry, freezing in the hallway, breath catching. Something had changed in Ron’s expression, like the grey, blustery sky had cleared instantaneously at the sight of her. “Can we talk?” he’d asked, quiet.

Hermione had nodded, and then they went out into the backyard without Harry and started walking through the rows of snow-covered apple trees, Ron’s hands in his pockets, Hermione’s gripping her elbows. Harry had watched them from the kitchen window, feeling something warm and relieved expand in his chest when they stopped in the middle of the orchard and embraced each other, Ron’s chin resting on top of her unbraided, frizzy hair, Hermione’s nose digging into his collarbone. 

When they’d come back, Hermione told Harry that they were “going to try again,” and there had been tears shining bright and glossy in Ron’s eyes. Then Hermione hugged Harry and told him how grateful she was to have him, and that she missed seeing him, and Harry had agreed profusely, and they all promised to talk to each other more. To stay in each other’s lives. 

Still, it was hard. Harry forgot things easily. Got caught up in his head easily. 

At one point, he’d accidentally gone three weeks without talking to anybody; he wasn’t depressed, he didn’t think, just caught up in other things. Caught up in himself. At the end of those three weeks, a knock much louder than Hermione’s or Ron’s sounded at the door, and he’d opened it to find Luna and Neville standing on the welcome mat. 

Harry hadn’t even had time to greet them before Luna had barreled inside and gasped with delight. “Oh, Harry, it’s lovely here!” she’d exclaimed, twirling around the saffron-painted kitchen and running her hands along the sunken velvet armchairs in the living room.

“Hermione sent us,” Neville had explained sheepishly. “She thinks you’ve been spending too much time alone, but she didn’t want to pressure you.” He’d then proceeded to hand Harry the largest potted house plant in the history of potted house plants. “Housewarming gift.”

Since then, Neville and Luna had been the only true regulars that came by Harry’s house on a weekly basis. They were a huge help with the orchard and a joy to be around; nothing felt strained around them, and Harry didn’t feel even the slightest of expectations when it came to them. With Ron and Hermione, there was always a grim subtext, a dark thread tying all of them together, usually untouched, but present nonetheless. With Luna and Nev, there was nothing of the sort. It made Harry feel guilty sometimes, but then he remembered Eva’s words about living “for himself,” and so he tried thinking of Luna and Neville’s presence as a treat to himself. As something cathartic. 

Now, from the other tree, Harry heard Luna humming a familiar song under her breath as she picked, her blonde hair flashing through the clumps of branches. Harry thought it might be “Golden Slumbers” by The Beatles, but he wasn’t sure. All their songs tended to melt together.

“I’m done with this one,” she said to Harry after a while, breaking the soft tune and climbing back down her ladder, basket already half-full. Harry shot her a thumbs up, then watched as she picked up one of the apples from her basket and bit into it thoughtfully. 

“Those aren’t washed, you know,” he pointed out, ducking his head under a thick branch so he could see her better. 

She shrugged loftily and rocked forward on her bare feet. “A little dirt never hurt anyone.”

Harry laughed faintly, then turned to pick the apple hanging red and glossy right in front of his nose as Luna started off towards the next tree. It was true, he supposed. A little dirt had certainly never hurt him.

*

By the time Phoebe finally made an appearance, Harry and Luna were sitting on the steps of the porch, sweating slightly from having worked through almost ten whole trees, peanut butter and jam sandwiches sitting half-eaten on plates in front of them.

“Where have you been?” Harry exclaimed when he saw her trotting towards them from the North corner of the orchard, brown tail wagging and pink tongue lolling out of her mouth. She answered his question by loping forward and shoving her head under his hand, eager for attention.

“Looks like she came back just in time for lunch,” Luna said, reaching out and fondly mussing up the long fur on her back.

“Of course you did,” Harry said, rolling his eyes and running his hands down her head to ruffle the part below her neck. She was a purebred Shetland sheepdog with long legs and light, fluffy fur that stuck out around her ears and down her back, colored grey and brown with specks of white splattered across her stomach. She wasn’t young, but she certainly wasn’t old, and Harry had owned her for about the same amount of time that he’d owned the house. “Daft dog. Are you hungry?”

Phoebe made a high-pitched whining noise that probably meant yes and shook herself excitedly. Harry squinted slightly and noticed a layer of dirt caking her paws and the tips of her fur. He frowned and bent down to get a closer look. 

“Had a little adventure, did you?” he asked, but all he got in return was a strange little wiggle and a sloppy attempt to try and lick his face. Luna laughed merrily.

“I’ll go get her dish,” she decided, standing up and stretching wide. There was a large smudge of mud streaked across her ankle below the cinched part of her makeshift trousers, and while it didn’t seem to be bothering her, Harry shot a quick _Scourgify_ at it so she wouldn’t track it into the house. He then did the same thing to Phoebe’s paws, causing her to sneeze in surprise and then try to lick Harry’s face a second time. 

“You’re disgusting,” he told her kindly. 

“Don’t insult her, Harry,” Luna chirped through the screen door. “You know she can’t defend herself.”

Harry’s eyebrows went up. “Hear that?” he asked Phoebe, scratching her head. “Luna thinks you can’t defend yourself. That’s awfully mean, isn’t it?”

Phoebe simply stared at Harry, tail swishing back and forth. 

“She agrees with me,” he informed Luna over his shoulder as she came back out holding Phoebe’s ceramic food dish filled with kibble. 

“You’re putting words into her mouth,” she rebutted, crouching down to set the dish on the top step and smiling wide when Phoebe scrambled up to reach it, ears and tail immediately perking up. “That’s it, good girl,” Luna cooed, patting her head. She glanced up at Harry. “What do you think she was doing in that part of the orchard? You don’t go over there much.”

“I don’t,” Harry agreed. The Northern wedge of the property had been left largely untouched when he was doing renovations, and still it remained wild and overgrown with tangled weeds and sharp nettles. The trees over there were generally less plentiful, and the few apples Harry’d ever picked from them had ended up being overly sour and soggy in the middle. He assumed it was the fault of whoever had operated the farm before him—apple trees were delicate things that needed proper care, and if one was grown using the wrong methods, it wouldn’t provide well for years afterward. Harry had never grown a tree himself, but he’d read about growing them, and the ones in the North corner were duds, so he didn’t pay them any mind.

It was odd that Phoebe would wander off over there, but it wasn’t unfathomable; there was a lot for her to sniff around and discover, what with the wild bushes of blackberries and the spindly ferns that overtook the area. She’d probably spent the morning tracking down the squirrels and field mice that liked to hide amid the greenery. Harry told Luna this, and she frowned and said “Poor squirrels.”

Harry snorted and leaned back against the wood banister, letting his head tip up and soak in the streaks of sunlight permeating the cloud cover, keeping his hand lightly on Phoebe’s back. Out of his peripheral vision he could see the North corner, lush and bedraggled, needing desperately to be tidied up. 

“Maybe I should go over there more,” he said to no one in particular. Luna hummed a benign agreement and Phoebe wagged her tail, brushing Harry’s dirt-smudged knees and making him smile.

*

The second time his dog went missing, both Luna and Neville broke into his house. Not really, though—Harry opened the door for them, bleary-eyed, still in his pyjamas, and even though it was still wrenchingly early, he was grateful Luna had chosen to ring the doorbell this time.

It was Saturday, meaning it was farmers’ market day, and Harry was scheduled for a nine o’clock slot. Nev and Luna loved farmers’ market day more than he did; they were great with customers, and they didn’t mind hanging out together under a white spindly tent for two to three hours, feet kicked up on the fold-out counter, jackets zipped up to their chins. Harry was a little more impatient, and he tended to get skittish when the crowds got bigger towards the afternoon. But if he wanted to keep his mortgage, he had to sell at least half of what he harvested, so he tried not to complain.

While Luna dragged Neville outside to go meet the baby chicks, Harry pulled on his favorite cords and laced up his boots in anticipation of the long-ish walk to his car, parked at the bottom of the hill where the river split. He stared at himself in the mirror over his wardrobe, narrowing his eyes critically at the coils of hair that stuck out over his eyes and at the back of his head, then grabbed a yellow elastic to pull it all back away from his face. He could probably ask Luna to help cut it later.

“You guys ready?” he asked through the screen after tramping downstairs, keys twirling around his index finger and wand carefully stowed in the sleeve of his jacket.

“Ready,” Neville confirmed, smiling and nudging a dreamy-looking Luna away from the chicken coop. He exchanged a look with Harry. “At least, I am.”

“They’re just so precious,” Luna cooed, clinging to Neville’s arm to steady herself. 

“And they’ll be here when we get back,” Harry promised, shutting the back door behind him. The crates of apples were sitting around the side of the house, waiting to be picked up and lugged down the hill so they could be shoved haphazardly into the boot of the car. Levitation charms were iffy because they tended to bruise the apples, so instead Luna cast lightening charms on all of them and they each took two, one stacked on top of the other. 

The tent and folding tables were also shoved into the boot of Harry’s car, able to fit all squashed together with the subtle help of an expansion spell. The car was old and beat-up, and there were always new dents on the hubcaps that Harry didn’t remember getting, but he loved it regardless. On the back, there was a whole army of bumper stickers that Ginny had given him for his birthday one year, saying things like _Warning: Dumbass on Board_ and _Don’t Panic, It’s Organic!_ and _Grow More Forests; Cut Down the Patriarchy_. There was also one that Luna gave him that just said _BEES_ , which, personally, was Harry’s favorite.

“Do we have everything?” Neville asked as he closed the boot, crates rattling as he did so. 

“I think so,” Harry nodded, patting down his pockets and looking around as if he might find something in the gravel driveway. 

“Is Phoebe coming?” Luna asked from her place in the passenger’s seat, twisting to look through the rolled-down window. 

“Oh,” Harry said, blinking, realising that he hadn’t seen Phoebe since he’d woken up that morning. “Yeah, she can. Let me go check the house really quick. Nev, can you get the car running?”

“Sure,” Neville said, catching the lanyard of keys Harry tossed his way before he turned and half-jogged back up the hill, eyes peeled for his troublesome pet. 

To his surprise, she wasn’t in the foyer when he pushed inside, and she didn’t come running when he called her name up the stairs. She also wasn’t in the kitchen, or the living room, or the bathroom, or the backyard, and Harry felt a beat of panic thrum through his chest. He scanned the orchard and called for her again, but there was no movement other than the slight rustle of the trees in the mild wind. 

A loud honk sounded from the bottom of the hill, followed by a shouted, “Harry! We’re going to be late!” and Harry looked at his watch. It was ten until nine, and the market was fifteen minutes away. Shit. 

Not sure what else to do, he brandished his wand and cast a rapid Patronus, instructing it to find Phoebe and keep an eye on her while they were away. It bobbed its silky, translucent head and pounded off into the Northern part of the orchard, and Harry watched it go, feeling dazed. 

Another honk sounded, followed by the sputtering rev of the car engine, so he shook himself and started to jog back, tendrils of hair slipping out from his tie and spilling into his face annoyingly. “No dog?” Neville asked when he finally reached the car and folded himself into the front seat where Neville had just moved from. 

“Couldn’t find her,” he said, out of breath and panting. Luna frowned.

“Again?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what’s up with her.” He clicked his seatbelt.“I sent my Patronus to go find her and it went towards the North corner. She’ll be fine without us for a few hours, I think.”

“She will,” Luna nodded, putting her feet up on the dash of the passenger’s seat. She was wearing socks today, thank Circe, ones with little multicoloured dinosaurs all over them. “She’s a clever dog. That’s odd, though, that she would be over there again. Do you think she’s found something interesting?”

“It’s possible,” Harry said, though he wasn’t sure how interesting a bunch of overgrown bushes could be. When he said this out loud, Neville gasped in offense from the backseat.

“I’ll have you know that they can be _extremely_ interesting, thank you,” he said, nose in the air. Then he leaned over the back of Luna’s headrest and poked at the radio. “As compensation for that comment, I get dibs on the music.”

Harry snorted lightly and shifted the car out of park, gravel crunching under the tyres as he began to pull out of the driveway. Neville flipped to a station that was playing something by Fleetwood Mac, and Luna immediately perked up. “Oh, I love this song,” she said excitedly, brushing Neville’s hand out of the way so she could dial up the volume.

“You’ve heard it before?” Neville asked, surprised, and Harry swatted at him to sit down and put his seatbelt on. He was rotating the steering wheel and maneuvering them out onto the dirt road that would eventually lead into town, cutting through the valley and running alongside the white-capped river that weaved between the yellow fields and modest hills surrounding his property. There were a few other privately-owned farming estates in the area, but only one or two shared the road with Harry, so it was practically empty.

“No,” Luna replied to Neville cheerfully, swaying her head to the sunny rhythm undulating from the radio and cracking her window open so the smell of the wind and the countryside bled into the car. 

Harry glanced over, watching as her straw-blonde hair whipped up around her face. “How do you know you love a song if you’ve never heard it before?” he asked, half-curious, half-skeptical.

She smiled at him good-naturedly. “It only takes a moment to decide you love something, Harry.”

She didn’t elaborate, leaving Harry to contemplate that nugget of wisdom on his own. He sort of understood, to an extent—he loved the song, too.

*

The farmers’ market went smoothly, as per usual, and by the time Harry’s slot was over, they’d managed to sell all six large crates of apples without any trouble. The drive back was nice, too, with Luna cranking up old songs that none of them recognised and rolling down the windows again, letting the wind in. It was so nice, in fact, that Harry had almost completely forgotten about his panic from earlier until he pulled back into his driveway and spotted a small blob of fur curled on the front porch up the hill.

“You,” he said to his traitorous dog as he climbed up the porch steps, balancing an empty crate against his hip, “are a very strange animal.” 

Phoebe just sat back on her haunches and stretched, languid and unbothered. There was dirt on her paws again.

“See, I knew she’d be fine without us,” Luna said proudly from somewhere behind Harry, putting down her own stack of crates to pet Phoebe’s head lovingly. 

She and Neville stayed for the rest of the day, helping Harry make fried tofu for lunch and then sitting on the floor of the living room, surfing idly through television channels while a small afternoon fire crackled in the hearth. Phoebe laid with her head in Harry’s lap, craning up every once in a while to try and take a swipe at his bowl of tofu, but she gave up halfway through an episode of The Great British Bake Off and promptly fell asleep. 

It was odd, Harry thought, being a dog person. That’s what Ginny called him last time she’d visited, which had to have been—what, a year ago? Almost a year? He couldn’t remember. Point is, she’d called him a dog person, offhanded and casual, a small smile on her freckled face tinged pink with wine. It caught Harry off guard, and he’d thought to himself, _no, that can’t be right._ There wasn’t anything wrong with being a dog person, it’s just that Harry had never been a dog-person before. He’d never been an anything-person before. He’d barely been a person-person most of his life. So it was weird hearing that come out of Ginny’s mouth, but it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. He thought he could be a dog person if he wanted to be. 

He supposed it was also weird because he’d only owned Phoebe for a few months, and she hadn’t really felt like _his dog_ yet. She was just an animal living in his house and eating his food. He hadn’t even meant to get a dog, it just sort of happened accidentally. Luna had given him a flyer about a charity day the local animal shelter was having, and he’d taken one look at Phoebe and decided, _yes, that’s the one._

He thought about what Luna had said—how it only takes a moment to decide you love something. He wondered if that applied to other things besides Fleetwood Mac songs and shelter dogs; if it applied to people, too.

Neville snorted, pointing at the television with his fork, a piece of steamed broccoli hanging off it. “She’s going to burn it,” he declared as a woman with tight grey curls appeared to completely forget about her sponge cake baking in the oven as she started on a lemon zest icing.

“Have you made sponge cake before?” Luna asked him, twisting on her back to look at him upside down. 

“No,” Neville said slowly.

“Then shut it,” she instructed sweetly, reaching up to pluck the piece of broccoli off his fork and pop it into her mouth. He cried out in protest.

Harry felt a smile tugging at his lips as he watched them. He wasn’t sure if he decided to love them, or if he decided to love Ron and Hermione, or Ginny. It wasn’t a decision, he didn’t think. Not a conscious one. But, theoretically, if it _was_ a decision, he definitely made the right one.

*

The third time Phoebe went missing, Harry was at his wits end.

“What the fuck have you been doing?” he demanded as he climbed down his ladder, his dog strolling towards him through the grove, ears perked and paws once again coated in mulch. It was a quarter past twelve, and Harry was attempting to be productive and prune some of his more troublesome trees. It was Monday—both Luna and Neville were busy with work and school—so he was on his own for the day.

Phoebe, of course, didn’t answer his question, choosing instead to wag her tail and sniff his feet like a weirdo. 

He wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand and peered at the wild, shadowed part of the yard that engulfed the North corner, feeling a heavy anvil of responsibility press down on his shoulders. He didn’t know what was over there other than old, probably diseased apple trees and out-of-control underbrush, and he didn’t really want to know. But the mediator within him urged him that learning to control that area would be another step in learning how to be a real, genuine farmer as opposed to the amateur-adjacent farmer he currently felt like. He really did need to tidy the place up, especially if Phoebe was going to continue her mysterious adventures. 

“She’s only gone in the mornings?” Neville asked when Harry brought it up over dinner a few days and a few more disappearances later. 

“As far as I know, yeah,” Harry confirmed through a mouthful of pomegranate and feta salad, plate balanced on his knees. He was sitting in his favorite velvet armchair, Luna on the couch, Neville in front of the fire. They always had to have a fire. 

“Weird,” Neville said.

“Very weird,” Luna agreed. “Do you think she’s found some sort of undomesticated colony of pack dogs somewhere in the woods? That would be _fascinating._ ”

Harry blinked, alarmed. “Those are real things? Like, actually?”

“Oh, yes,” Luna replied, sitting up, sounding serious. “Dad had a run-in with one on a camping trip he took a few months back. He’s fine, of course, it just spooked him. He gets quite nervous around dogs.” She paused. “Although, now that I think about it, I don’t remember if it was dogs. It might’ve been badgers. He gets nervous around those, too.”

Neville scrunched his nose. “Eugh, I don’t blame him. Badgers are terrifying.”

“And misunderstood,” Luna added sadly.

Not wanting to think about a colony of badgers for longer than strictly necessary, Harry tried to steer the conversation back to the issue at hand. “Either way, I don’t think Phoebe’s found a colony of anything. The North corner isn’t _that_ wild.”

Neville nodded thoughtfully and tore a piece of naan bread off the platter on the coffee table. “You should try following her,” he said to Harry before taking a bite and gesturing with his half-eaten bread. “Even if it’s not a nest of badgers or dogs, it’s possible there could be something dangerous in the woods since you haven’t checked them out.”

“Dangerous?” Harry’s heart dropped.

“Well, not like dementors or giants or anything like that, but she could be getting at poisonous plants or berries, or something. There tend to be a lot of those in woodlands that aren’t regularly maintained. It’s probably worth checking out.”

Luna bobbed her head in agreement while Harry looked at Phoebe anxiously, her chin resting on Neville’s ankle, dozing lightly. 

“Yeah,” Harry said, a knot in his chest, “Yeah, it probably is.”

*

Early the next morning, Harry awoke to the squawk of his alarm and faint yellow light slanting in through his bedroom windows, casting geometric patterns on the wrinkled duvet and scuffed floors. The clump of blankets at the end of the bed was flattened and empty, just like it had been every morning for the past week—but this time he had a plan.

He slipped out of bed and pulled on his flannel trousers and his heaviest black jumper, sleeves falling far past his fingertips. His hair was a nightmare, but he didn’t want to waste time trying to tame it back, so he just grabbed an elastic hairband and pulled the longest locks out of his face.

“Going somewhere?” Neville asked sleepily when Harry came padding into the kitchen in search of his trainers, probably looking like a madman, given that he was wearing half-pajamas and half-winter gear. 

“Following Phoebe,” he answered, bending over to swipe his beat-up Chucks from the pile of shoes next to the door. He wasn’t too surprised to see Neville sitting at the dining table, hands wrapped around a hot mug of chamomile tea, but he certainly wasn’t expecting him to be awake so early. 

“Oh, right,” Neville replied through a yawn. There was a plate of partially-eaten apple tart sitting in front of him. “I think I saw her pass through here a few minutes ago. She went through the flappy thing.” He waved his hand at the rubber dog-flap built into the back door.

“Did you stay the night?” Harry asked, even though the answer was quite obvious—unless Neville had decided on a whim to come over at seven in the morning. When Harry had gone to bed the evening before, both he and Luna had been in the living room watching _Monty Python_ , clearly not planning to go home anytime soon. Harry remembered mumbling something about how they could find extra blankets in the hallway closet if they needed, but he hadn’t stuck around to see if they actually stayed or not.

Neville nodded and swallowed a sip of his tea, steam curling around his face. A reddish pillow crease ran down one of his cheeks. “Yeah, I took the couch, Luna took the guest room. Hope that’s okay.”

“Ah,” Harry said, now understanding why he was up so early; the couch was only comfortable to sleep on for a maximum of three to four hours. Anything beyond that would end in a serious muscle cramp or a bitch of a sore neck. “No problem. Save some of that tart for me, yeah? I shouldn’t be gone long.”

Neville smiled blearily and gave him a thumbs-up. “Good luck. Don’t get eaten by a rabid colony of dogs.”

Harry smiled back. “I’ll do my best,”

The sky outside was streaked with heavy grey clouds when he pushed through the back door onto the porch, the dull morning blue shot with pink and orange from the rising sun. The grass was wet and squishy, and everything smelled of fresh, damp earth. Phoebe was nowhere to be seen, but the wand in Harry’s hand was twitching North—just as he expected it to. He’d cast a subtle tracking charm on her before falling asleep the night before, and while his wand wouldn’t tell him exactly where she was, it would at least point him in the right direction.

He set off towards the North corner with hazy determination, trying not to let the bleariness from waking up so early deter him. Birds chirped around him jovially, and there was a thin layer of fog ghosting the treetops and obscuring the not-so-distant hillside. The tangled North grove loomed high and mighty over the clearing, the branches of ferns curling outward like skeletal hands that grasped at Harry as he stepped by, clawing at his feet. 

Just inside the grove, a small, barely-used path cut meekly through the greenery and wound inward towards the surrounding woodlands, beyond where Harry had ever bothered exploring. Despite the fact that the property had been sold to him by a wizarding real estate agency, this particular area of Bedfordshire was entirely Muggle; he didn’t expect to see any roaming centaurs or wild acromantula nests, yet he stayed wary of the rustling bushes and the animalistic chirps that sounded every now and again. Muggle forests could be just as terrifying as enchanted ones. He knew better than most, given that he’d spent a majority of his seventh year living in both. 

As he walked, dry leaves and broken twigs crunching under his feet, his wand quivered in his palm and swung a bit towards the East, guiding him down an even smaller branch of the overgrown trail. He wasn’t that far from his property yet—he could still see the dark panels of his French-style farmhouse through the trees—but he was far enough that the canopy was thick and dark above him, blocking out the light. Sheer frost blanketed every tree and bush, cold wind tumbling through the papery leaves, brushing Harry’s skin, making him shiver. 

The path stretched on and on for what felt like miles, twisting around fallen logs and down short outcroppings of rock and dirt. At one point, it began to slope downward, following a set of chipped, sunken wood boards that were set into the ground, acting as a sort of crumbling stairway. Harry was careful stepping down it, keeping one hand on the passing tree trunks so he didn’t stumble and fall face-first into the oncoming greenery. 

At the bottom of the slope was—to his slight surprise—a river. Or, rather, _the_ river that ran alongside the main road and had runoffs all over the area, between the hills and through the clumps of forest. This particular stream was barely three yards wide, clear and bubbling over the jagged riverbed, white and foamy around the edges where it splashed up against the rocks. Down the stream was a rickety-looking bridge made of dark, damp spruce, stalky water reeds sticking up through the slats, and Harry silently cursed himself for never exploring this part of the property. 

Even though the whole scene was a little rundown and waterlogged, it was charming and mystical in a quaint kind of way, like it’d been plucked out of a storybook and left to the wild for twenty years. With a few wood-restoring spells and a string of fairy lights, the bridge could look as sturdy and magical as it probably once did, the willow trees arching artfully towards it, their leaves brushing the river and reflecting shades of deep green across the crystalline surface. He smiled a bit as he pictured rowing a Venetian gondola down the stream while singing a barcarolle, instructing Neville and Luna to make a wish as they passed under the arch of the bridge. He dismissed the fantasy before he could begin to fixate on it; the stream was much too small for a gondola, anyway. 

Over the bridge, there was a slight fork in the trail where an even skinnier footpath led up into what looked like a rocky cove surrounded by oak trees, but Harry’s wand swung in the other direction and took him even further along the stream, away from his house. He would have worn his hiking boots if he’d known he was going to hike this deep into the woods. He must have been walking for a solid fifteen minutes by the time he came upon a dilapidated, moss-covered fence, half-sunken into the springy dirt and overtaken by plaited ivy. Still, his wand urged him forward, so he placed one hand on the top rung and vaulted over, feeling the cold tingle of wards slide down the back of his neck as he did so. 

He realised a second too late that he’d crossed the official property line, and a sudden, sharp fear gripped him. Surely Phoebe wouldn’t have gone this far without him? She’d never done anything like that before. She barely used to leave the bed without him persuading her with the promise of food.

Feeling unsteady, Harry continued slowly down the thin brown path until it opened up onto a dipped clearing surrounded by elm and laurel trees, all bending inward towards the centre where a house not unlike his own came into view. It was two-storied, made of sun-bleached stone and stained clapboard, the roof slanted and stark against the soft curves of the rising hills. The windows were large and coated with chipped yellow paint, timeworn and sticky-looking, and there were clusters of ivy crawling up the sides and engulfing the building in dark shades of green.

Confused and a little shocked, Harry stopped in the shade of a curving tree and drew close to it, unsure if he was trespassing on private property or not. The place looked abandoned at first glance, but when he squinted, he could see a thin clothesline swaying in the breeze, weighted with white linen sheets and patterned towels. He could also see a meekly gurgling fountain shaped like a mermaid not far beyond, nestled among tall patches of yellow-ish grass. Scattered pots of herbs and tomato vines dotted the yard, creating a short, wide path up to the back porch, one that looked nearly identical to Harry’s, furniture and everything. 

Harry was floored. Had he somehow wandered into his neighbour’s backyard? He knew there were other properties in the area—of course he knew that—but he’d never gone as far as to try and meet his neighbours. He’d been rather enjoying the whole “lonely hermit who only sees two people a week” shtick he had going on. But this was obviously someone else’s house on someone else’s property, and Harry knew he needed to get out of here before he got arrested for trespassing, or worse. 

But then his wand tugged sharply in his hand, jerking his arm, and he whipped his head up to see Phoebe bounding through the clearing, ears flapping. 

“Oh, thank Merlin,” he breathed, relief crashing over him, but she was running in the opposite direction. Running towards the house, in fact, with a large, heavy branch hanging out of her mouth and dragging on the grass. Running towards a man that Harry had only just noticed standing at the foot of the porch, sort of blending into the slanted shadows of the morning. A man with white-blonde hair, and long legs, and a black windbreaker, and—and… 

Harry’s heart dropped to his knees.

 _No,_ he thought. _That’s impossible._

Standing at the foot of the porch, amid the stalks of grass and the overgrown beds of swaying white wildflowers, was Draco Malfoy, bent slightly at the waist and petting Harry’s dog.

_No._

Harry blinked, shook his head, then blinked again. 

He was hallucinating. He had to be. There was no other possible reason that would explain why he was watching Draco fucking Malfoy take the large stick out of Phoebe’s mouth and wield it back like he was about to throw it, then actually threw it. Like he was playing fetch with her. And then she ran after it. Like she was playing fetch with him. 

There was no possible reason. None. 

Malfoy straightened up, and his head got caught in a wedge of light cutting in from over the top of the slanted roof, and his hair glinted like it thought it was a pearl, or a diamond, or—or something else obnoxious and sparkly. A disco ball, maybe. An annoying, pointy, pale-faced disco ball that was _playing fetch with Harry’s dog._

Harry felt sick. 

All at once, his knees felt wobbly and made of rubber and wood, like he was a puppet being held up by a set of thin plastic strings, ready to break at the slightest wrong move. His heart beat in his ears as glimpses of orange, angry fire flashed before his eyes; he saw pictures of crumbling stairways, of flooded bathrooms, of blood-stained fabric, of scorched rubble, of overturned tables, of green curses. Of King’s Cross Station, white and nebulous.

He held to the tree for stability, fingers digging into the bark and splintering his palms.

Malfoy hadn’t seen him, and neither had Phoebe. She was still bounding through the clearing, her brown and grey pelt cutting a straight line through the wild grass, on the lookout for the stick Malfoy had thrown. Harry wanted desperately to step out from behind the tree and yell at her, to demand she come over here _right this bloody instant_ and get away from this place. This old, rickety, overgrown place with a young, shiny Malfoy standing in the middle of it all, his arms folded against the brisk chill. 

Harry didn’t even know why he was still looking at Malfoy, watching the breeze whip his stupid platinum hair around his stupid pointy face, almost like Luna’s hair had whipped around her face in the car that other day. Except Luna was a better person than Malfoy. Luna was probably the best person Harry knew, and Malfoy wasn’t like her at all. Not even a tiny bit. They were both blonde, but that was it. That was the extent of their alikeness. Everything else came to a screeching halt there.

 _They’re both good at fetch,_ Harry’s brain supplied as he saw Phoebe triumphantly recover the branch and begin her bounding journey back towards the house, looking happier than Harry had ever seen her, and then he immediately repealed that statement and began to burn it with a mental torch in his brain. No, Malfoy was _not_ good at fetch, and he would never be good at fetch. Not in a million years.

Phoebe barked in the distance, and it wasn’t the kind of bark she did when she was nervous, or angry, or protective; it was her friendly bark. The one that she only ever used around him. 

His stomach lurched, and without stopping to think, he gripped his wand and Apparated before he could throw up right there in Draco Malfoy’s backyard. The clammy, organ-twisting darkness that overtook him was more than welcome, enfolding him, pulling him away.

* * *

Something loud cracked behind Draco like a whip, and a cold, unpleasant sensation zipped down his spine, as if ice had just been poured down the back of his shirt.

Startled, he whipped around and grabbed at his neck, looking in the direction of the noise that had sounded somewhere from beyond the fluttering clothesline. It had sounded almost like a firecracker, booming and sharp, over in less than a second. It sounded like something had been shot into the air, or cracked open, or torn. 

But there was nothing there except swaying linen and rustling trees; the same ones that had been standing there since Draco had moved in almost a week ago. 

He looked the other direction, feeling wild and on-edge without his wand in his pocket. The only thing he saw was the small, speckled dog running towards him, seemingly unbothered by the noise, stick hanging out of its mouth all lopsided and dragging in the grass. Draco thought that dogs were supposed to be terrified of loud noises like that, but this one didn’t seem to have a care in the world other than what was in its mouth. Which was a good philosophy, he supposed, if you were an animal that walked on all fours and didn’t have opposable thumbs.

Heart thudding at the speed of light, Draco did a once-over of the clearing, pivoting slightly but feeling frozen and rooted to the dirt beneath his soles. Everything seemed to be in place, for the most part; the sky was still a faded shade of blue, the house was still standing—lopsided as it may be—and the birds were still chirping from their pedestals among the jagged branches. Everything was exactly how it was when Draco had first stepped outside with a cup of tea in his hands and saw the dog coming towards him, tail wagging, fur coated with light frost. 

“Did you feel that, too?” a voice called over Draco’s shoulder, and he turned to see Theo pushing through the back door and coming out onto the porch, forehead creased with concern. 

“Yes,” Draco replied, blinking and feeling deeply unsettled. He steadied himself by grabbing onto the bottom post of the porch railing. “What in Circe’s tits was that?” 

Theo grimaced, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand as he came to the bottom of the steps next to Draco. “I think someone tore the wards.”

_“What?”_

“Yeah,” Theo said grimly, spinning in place and scanning the perimeter of the yard like Draco had done two seconds ago. “That’s what that weird icy feeling was. Greg felt it, too.”

Draco’s fingers tightened around the post as he tried to process that bit of information, heart still drumming in his ears. The dog had stopped running and was now approaching Draco and Theo slowly with a kind of curious head-tilt. The branch was still sticking out of its mouth, probably in hopes that Draco would throw it again. It looked ridiculous.

He looked back at Theo. “Someone would’ve had to Apparate to tear the wards, wouldn’t they?”

Theo nodded. “Yes. And I know damn well it wasn’t any of us.”

“What the fuck,” Draco said, horrified.

“What the fuck,” Theo agreed, hands on his hips, brown hair tangled in the early wind. He wasn’t properly dressed for the cold morning at all, clad in nothing but a pair of joggers and a dark blue dressing gown that was flapping around his calves.

Draco asked shakily, “Is everyone else inside?”

Theo shook his head and began moving away, stepping over a clump of daisies so he could stand in the centre of the clearing. “Pansy went swimming down at the ravine again.”

A knot of panic tightened in Draco’s chest. “Shit. Do you think—?”

Theo shook his head, cutting Draco off. “I don’t know. I doubt it, but I don’t know. Could you go check on her, just to be safe? I want to walk the perimeter and find out where the wards broke.”

“Yeah,” Draco said, nodding, then repeated it as if to reassure himself. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Thank you,” Theo said earnestly. “If there’s anyone here, I’ll find out. I swear.”

“I know. I trust you.”

Theo’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and he nodded curtly before turning away to start circling the perimeter of the clearing. Draco had no idea how he was going to figure out where the wards broke without a wand in hand, but it was true—he did trust Theo. He trusted Theo with his life.

Taking a deep, meditative breath, Draco turned away from the clearing and began heading down the beaten path that led to the ravine situated a few minutes away from the house, where Pansy liked to have a swim on occasion. She was insane for doing so in the dead middle of October at seven in the morning, but every time Draco bugged her about it, she claimed that she ran “warm-blooded” like the rest of her family. He never bothered pointing out that every human being on Earth ran warm-blooded.

It wasn’t until he was halfway across the yard that Draco heard uneven, heavy breathing that wasn’t coming from him, and he looked back over his shoulder to find the grey and brown dog trotting at his heels, the branch still in its mouth. 

Draco stopped walking. “Merlin,” he said, peering down his nose at the dog. Its tail was perked high and mighty, its paws covered with spongy dirt from the wet, mulchy ground. “You can go on home, now. I have some business to attend to that, unfortunately, doesn’t involve any stick-throwing.”

The dog just stared at him, tail wagging slowly.

Draco sighed. “I suppose you can help me sniff Pansy out in case she’s been kidnapped.” A beat. “You don’t think she’s been kidnapped, do you?”

The dog blinked wide, uncomprehending, puppy-ish eyes at him.

“No,” he agreed shakily, “I don’t think so either. Come on.”

*

Draco wasn’t sure what to call the body of water in the basin of the ravine. It was too small to be a river but too large to be a stream, surrounded by an outcropping of slick, rounded granite and sheltered in by scraggly, half-uprooted trees. He tried calling it “the waterfall” for a few days, but that was a blatant white lie; the tiny, bubbling stream could barely be called a waterfall, as it only dropped down a foot or two. It was just a kind of gurgling runoff from the river up the road, trickling meekly into a crystal-clear pool barely deep enough to swim in. It was clean, though, and that was apparently enough of an incentive for Pansy to dive in headfirst—literally.

“Come to have a swim?” she called from below as Draco hauled himself up the edge of the ravine, one foot planted on a large, dented boulder that stuck out over the water. She was bobbing around in the alcove across from him, her dark, choppy hair pulled back into a mini ponytail to prevent it from getting wet.

“Not today, much as I’d enjoy freezing my appendages off,” Draco replied wryly, squinting down at her. The grey-ish sunlight was streaking sporadically through the trees and reflecting off the surface of the water, flashing in Draco’s vision. “Just checking to see whether or not you’ve been kidnapped.”

Pansy’s dark eyebrows sprang up as she pedaled her arms and moved closer. “I certainly haven’t.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Context, please?” she requested, pulling herself half out of the pool with her elbows planted on a wet slab of rock. “Is there a ransom on my head or something?” 

“Not that I’m aware of, no.” Draco stepped up so both of his feet were on the boulder, toes curling around the edge. “Did you not feel the wards tear?” he asked after regaining his balance. 

She blinked. “I might’ve. Did it just happen?”

“Yeah, a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, that’s what that was.” She squinted and tilted her head back, presumably so she could frown at Draco better. “You’re saying that the wards breaking led you to believe I got kidnapped? That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”

Draco frowned back. “You’re the only one not back at the house.”

She waved her hand. “Irrelevant. Have you come to save me from my damsel-like distress, o’ brave knight in shining armor?”

“Take it back.”

“No.” She smiled all catlike and sly, then tilted her head to peer through Draco’s legs. “That bloody dog’s back again?”

Draco looked around. Sure enough, the grey and brown dog was right behind him, tail still wagging, but no more stick hanging from its teeth. Now its tongue was lolling out of its mouth rather daftly, and the sight made Draco’s mouth twitch up. “Yeah. This is the fifth day, I think.”

“Bizarre,” Pansy said wondrously. “Should we have given her a name by now?”

Draco looked back. “What makes you think it’s a ‘her’?”

Pansy gave him a long-suffering look. “Perhaps the fact that she doesn’t have a dick.”

Draco scrunched his nose. “You’re vulgar. Genitals and gender are completely different things.”

“Oh, my god.” Pansy rolled her eyes and pulled herself further out of the water, half-sitting on the slab of rock. “I keep forgetting you’re all politically correct now. She’s a dog, Draco. Dogs don’t have a gender spectrum.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Her brain is literally the size of a walnut.” Pansy flicked a wet piece of hair out of her face, then sighed at Draco’s offended scowl. “What if we called her something gender-neutral, like Avery or Emerson or something, not she’ll really mind that much. Given that she’s a dog and all.”

“Don’t you reckon she has a name already?”

“Maybe,” Pansy shrugged. “But we can’t just keep calling her ‘the dog.’ It’s exhausting.”

“No, it’s not?”

“Um, yes, it is.”

“It’s really not,” Draco argued, feeling defensive of the poor thing. It shouldn’t have to be subject to Pansy’s bitchiness if it couldn’t verbally defend itself. “It’s two bloody syllables.”

“Whatever,” Pansy said, dismissing Draco with another wave of her hand. “I’m calling her Emerson and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Draco narrowed his eyes at her. “Weren’t we talking about you getting kidnapped?”

“No, we were talking about me _not_ getting kidnapped.” She pulled herself fully out of the pool, coils of water making shiny trails down her bare shoulders and legs. “Pass me that towel?”

Draco did, grabbing the striped yellow towel hanging patiently on the branch of a low-slung tree and tossing it down to her.

“Thanks.” She wrapped herself in it, holding it around her shoulders like a cape as she made her way back up the jagged slope of the ravine. When she finally reached the top, she asked, “Did the wards really tear?”

Draco grimaced. “Yes.”

“Shit,” she sighed. “That’s not good, is it?”

“I don’t think it is. Theo’s on patrol trying to find where they broke.”

“Good man.” She shivered and brought the towel tighter around herself. “Merlin, what I’d give for a Warming Charm right about now.”

“That’s what you get for having a swim in October, lunatic,” Draco replied, but squeezed her arm fondly as if his touch just might help her warm up a bit. “Should we head back?”

She nodded emphatically, holding the towel close. “Yes, please. I’d rather not be standing around freezing my tits off when this potential kidnapper shows up.”

“Good plan,” Draco agreed.

“Come along, Emerson,” Pansy chirped to the dog as she slipped her flip flops on. Draco rolled his eyes, but decided to let it slide this once as they turned and started back in the direction of the house, the little, speckled dog following close at their heels.

* * *

Harry collapsed in a heap of frustration, groaning into his folded arms.

“Everything alright?” Neville asked from somewhere across the sanded plywood, voice light with amusement.

“Far from it,” Harry mumbled to the table. 

“Elaborate?” He felt Neville’s shoe poke him in the shin, and he lifted his head reluctantly. Took a breath.

“Draco Malfoy stole my dog.”

Neville made a short choking noise. “Sorry, what?”

“Draco Malfoy,” Harry repeated, slow and scathing, “stole my dog.”

“You—” Neville stared at him. “Harry, are you feeling okay?”

“I was!” Harry exclaimed. “Until I saw bloody Malfoy playing fetch with my bloody dog on the bloody property next door. _My dog_.” His knuckles were flushed reddish brown. He wondered if his face looked the same.

“Are you saying—Draco Malfoy lives next door? Is that—is that what you’re saying?” Neville stumbled over his words, sounding flabbergasted.

Harry rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, pushing his glasses awkwardly up to the bridge of his nose. “That is exactly what I’m saying.”

“What.”

Harry gritted his teeth. “I know.”

Neville’s brow creased, conflicting emotions rippling across his face. “Where’s Phoebe now?”

“I just said she’s with Malfoy. Playing fetch,” Harry spat, dropping his hands.

“You _left_ her there?”

“I panicked!” Harry exclaimed, even though he felt the exact same way. He shouldn’t have left her there. He should have bucked up and done something, not Disapparate at the first sign of trouble. Still, feeling prickly and defensive of his dignity, he argued, “It’s Draco fucking Malfoy! I was a bit caught off guard, if you can’t tell.”

“I can tell,” Neville assured him. “You’re sure it was him and not some random blonde bloke who looks like him?”

“I know a Malfoy when I see one.”

Neville winced. “Fair enough. Are you going to go back over there?”

“No,” Harry said flatly, even though he should. He really fucking should.

Neville looked surprised. “But, Phoebe—”

“Will come back at lunchtime like she has every day for the past week,” Harry cut in with a snarl, then immediately felt bad about it. He rubbed his eyes again, but the ache behind his brow bone was pulsing bigger and bigger with every word he spoke. “I’m sorry, Nev, that was rude. I just—I genuinely cannot believe this.”

“Yeah,” Neville agreed, mouth turned down in a frown. “Me neither.”

“Why the fuck would she go to him like that?” Harry asked wildly, slumping down in his dining chair and feeling his jumper ruck up against the wood uncomfortably. There was probably going to be a red crease across his lower back later, but he couldn’t muster up the strength to care. The sight of Draco Malfoy had knocked it all out. “Why—how fucking long has he even been there?”

“If you went back,” Neville suggested like the conciliatory angel he was, “you could just ask him. With words. Nouns and verbs and all that good stuff.”

“No,” Harry said.

“But—”

“ _No._ ”

Neville blew a frustrated raspberry. “Fine,” he stated, pushing his chair back from the table. “Don’t go back.”

Harry put his hands over his face again, like he couldn’t bear to hold his own head up. “I don’t plan on it,” he said, muffled.

“Merlin, Harry.” There was a scrape of ceramic against wood, signaling that Neville had stood. “I saved some of that tart for you, in case you’re still interested,” he said, suddenly sounding exhausted.

Harry peeked through his fingers, gaze falling on the half-eaten platter of apple tart, gooey and warm-looking, inviting Harry to come take a slice, but he’d completely lost his appetite. “Thanks,” he said anyway, tired.

Neville rounded the table, and Harry noticed for the first time that morning that he was still in pyjamas, wearing one of Harry’s pairs of heather grey joggers. Harry didn’t know when exactly he’d lent those over, or _if_ he’d lent them over at all, but he didn’t really mind. Neville looked better in them than he did, anyway.

“Also,” Neville said, “Mate, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you might want to take a shower. You’ve got leaves in your hair.”

“What?” Harry said blearily, reaching up to touch his hair absently. Sure enough, a couple of dry, crunchy leaves were caught in his wild nest of curls, clear evidence of his trek through the woods and his hasty, uncoordinated Apparition. “Jesus Christ,” he said, closing his eyes and trying with every muscle in his body not to lose it.

Neville patted his shoulder sympathetically.

* * *

“This is where the wards broke,” Theo said, pointing a finger at his poor drawing of the property scribbled on the back of an old takeout menu, the Northeast area marked by a wobbly circle. “And this,” he moved his finger just slightly, tracing a jagged line of ink that crawled off the page, “is the path that connects our plot to the one next door.”

“You mean the big apple orchard?” Pansy asked, looking up from where she was leaning back in her chair, picking at her fingernails. Her hair was still tied up in a short ponytail, and the loose strands around the nape of her neck and around her face were still damp and curling from her swim. Her bare feet were propped up on the kitchen table about an inch away from where Theo was trying to show Draco the breach site.

“That’s the one,” Theo confirmed, straightening up. “My hypothesis is that whoever’s living there crossed over the property line and then Disapparated before they could get caught.”

“Meaning that there are wizards living next door?” Draco asked, tilting his head back to look up at Theo over his shoulder.

“That’d be my guess.”

“Brilliant,” Pansy sighed.

“But how are we only finding out now?” Draco asked uncomfortably, shifting against the stiff wood of his dining chair. He would give at least a hundred Galleons for one of the high-backed chairs with squishy cushions and curved armrests that used to sit around the informal dining room in the Manor, charmed to mold perfectly to anyone who sat in them. But, alas, he didn’t have a hundred Galleons. “We’ve been here for nearly a whole week. Surely we would’ve noticed if we had magical neighbours.”

Theo shrugged. “Beats me. I figured that we were the only wizarding house in the area.”

“Maybe they’ve just moved in?” Greg suggested from his place at the head of the table, shoulders hunched and large hands wrapped around a comically small mug of coffee. 

Pansy snapped her fingers and sat up abruptly. “That would explain Emerson!”

Draco, Theo, and Greg all swiveled to look at her, uncomprehending. “Who?” Greg asked.

“The dog!” Pansy said, swinging her feet off the table to get up and peer out through the square window of the back door. “If we’re going with Theo’s ‘hypothesis,’ then she probably belongs to the wizards next door.”

“That doesn’t explain why she’s been coming over here, though,” Draco retorted, pushing his chair out and coming to stand beside her. The brown and grey dog—Emerson, as Pansy insisted on calling her—was still prancing around outside, sticking her wet nose into the beds of untamed wildflowers and sniffing the dilapidated, weed-covered patio furniture. He went on, “It’s not like we’ve been leaving food out or anything. She just showed up out of nowhere.”

“No, but I’m just saying,” Pansy stated. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? That she would belong to wizards?”

“It does,” Theo said. “Dogs who live around wizards can pick up on magical footprints pretty easily. Maybe she’s just been doing some exploring, or something.”

“You’ve had a dog before?” Draco asked, twisting to arch a disbelieving eyebrow in Theo’s direction.

“I had a crup when I was younger,” Theo replied. “Same thing.”

“It’s not, but okay,” Draco rebutted, feeling a muted kind of jealousy swirl up in his head. He’d always wanted a crup when he was little—he’d asked for one every single Christmas for at least six years—but his father was allergic to pretty much any animal with fur, so that was that. His mother had tried giving him a pet gecko in compensation, but it’d escaped about a week later. Draco never saw it again.

“Should we return her to her owners?” Greg piped up from the table, sounding anxious. “Maybe they were looking for her and they crossed the wards by accident.”

“No,” Draco said, shaking his head and shutting that idea down immediately. “She’ll get back just fine on her own. She always leaves right before lunch.”

“If we walked her back we could meet the owners,” Theo pointed out.

“We would be trespassing.”

“Nothing they haven’t done to us.”

Draco stared at him incredulously. “You really want to traipse all the way next door just to have an awkward conversation with people who _might_ be wizards and _might_ know who we are?”

“No one said it had to be awkward,” Greg said, as if making that declaration would guarantee it wouldn’t be awkward.

“Do you not remember why we moved out here in the first place?” Draco asked, whirling around and leveling them both with disbelieving looks. They didn’t answer. “To get away from wizards! Not to live right bloody next to them and become best friends who lend cups of sugar to each other!”

Theo turned away from the table, apparently deciding to ignore him. “Whatever. I’m going.”

Greg stood from his seat. “Me too.”

Draco stared at them a moment longer, then grunted and said, “Merlin, fine, since you’re both so bloody stubborn.”

Theo raised his eyebrows as he grabbed his dark blue hooded jumper off the hook next to the door. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Actually, I do,” Draco replied, not feeling happy about it. He strode across the kitchen and grabbed the black windbreaker that he’d discarded over the back of his chair, still damp with morning dew. “Obviously, you’ll need my oodles of strength to protect you if these new neighbours start flinging hexes.”

Pansy burst abruptly into laughter, loud and disbelieving as Draco shrugged his jacket on.

“Coming, Pans?” Theo asked with amusement as he twisted the silver handle and opened the back door, a gush of cold air spilling in behind him.

“No, no,” Pansy said, catching her breath. “I’ll stay back and use my own _oodles of strength_ to guard the house.”

Draco flipped her off as he pushed past, rucking his collar up against the cold. “Wretched woman. Don’t get kidnapped while we’re gone.”

She grinned wickedly, flipped him off right back, then continued to laugh.

*

Draco hated hiking with every fibre of his being—he hated how his skin got all red and blotchy when he hiked uphill, how he sweat in places he didn’t know he could sweat from, how he couldn't wear a perfectly nice, ironed white shirt or pressed wool slacks without ruining them both with grass stains and dirt—but, surprisingly. today wasn’t so bad.

The hike felt more like a stroll through the woods than anything else, and these woods happened to be lovely. There was a small gurgling stream cut into the ground parallel to the trail, a rotting wooden bridge that arched gracefully over said stream, and gold willow trees that bloomed plentiful and numerous around every corner. Draco was rather enjoying himself, in all honesty, even though he really tried not to. He didn’t want to give Greg or Theo the satisfaction of thinking this was a good idea. 

Draco was at the very back of the group—they had to walk single-file because the trail was so skinny—and for reasons unbeknownst to him, the speckled dog stuck by his heels almost the entire time. She panted heavily and happily, sometimes stepping on the rubbery bits of his boots near his heels, as if she was herding him along the trail. She obviously knew where she was going, although she didn’t seem to be in a rush to get back. 

After at least fifteen minutes of walking, the path they were following began dwindling down into a barely-trampled line of greenery snaking through the overgrown underbrush, unused and wild. Whoever lived next door must have not liked hiking, either, because this part of the woods seemed to be completely overrun with weeds and serrated ferns.

“Are we going the right way?” Draco asked, bending a rogue branch out of the way so it didn’t slap him in the face.

“There’s only one way, so we must be,” Theo answered from ahead, but he didn’t sound too confident.

Finally, the mounds of greenery began to clear and the canopy above slowly got thinner, yellow light beginning to permeate through and make patterns on the leaf-coated ground. Through the trees, Draco caught a glimpse of a flattened meadow surrounded by an extensive crop of apple trees, bright and tall compared to the bedraggled oaks and sunken ferns of the woods. 

On the far edge of the clearing was a house not unlike the one they were staying at, though it seemed a fair bit less run down. The paint wasn’t chipping and the roof wasn’t sloped in the center, and the backyard was well-manicured and fresh, looking much more healthy than the one across the property line. Draco wondered bitterly why theirs couldn’t look like that.

At first glance, the clearing looked empty, save for an old splintered shed and an odd wooden structure that looked sort of like a miniature version of the house, shingled roof and everything. But then, as they drew closer, a figure appeared at the top of the porch. There was a flash of blonde, and then Draco’s view was obscured by another tree. Greg’s steps faltered.

“Was that—?” he started, then shook his head. “No, nevermind.”

They walked a few more paces, having to step over a mossy, frail-looking log that had probably fallen across the trail centuries ago, and then the house came into view again—as did the figure. 

Draco tripped. 

“Lovegood?” Theo gawked from in front of him, coming to a full stop on the edge of the clearing.

Sure enough, a young woman with long, coiling blonde hair and a floor-length cardigan was standing on the steps of the porch, looking very much like a matured version of Luna Lovegood, one hand shading the slanted afternoon sun from her eyes as she peered in their direction.

“Oh my god,” Draco choked, stumbling to steady himself on the trunk of a nearby tree so he didn’t get a faceful of dirt.

“You guys see her too, right?” Greg asked, sounding pained. “I’m not hallucinating?”

Lovegood stepped off the porch and into the full light of the morning.

“I see her,” Draco said, feeling wild and terrified for what was about to transpire. He’d been joking earlier about hexes being flung, but now it didn’t seem so funny. Then, from behind Draco, the dog darted through his legs and began streaking towards Lovegood, ears flapping and tail swishing impossibly fast. He watched Lovegood’s face light up at the sight of the dog, bending her knees as it came barreling into her arms. She was distracted for a long moment, smiling and cooing something unintelligible to the excited animal, but then—as if it was inevitable—she raised her head and looked directly at Draco, gaze piercing and blue.

“Hello there,” she said, raising her voice, since she was all the way across the clearing, all the while remaining completely, eerily calm. “I assume you’re the neighbours?”

Draco felt too paralysed to say anything. Greg was staring, slack-jawed.

Theo, being the biggest man out of all of them, took a minuscule step forward and said, tentatively, “We—yes, we are.”

She stood fully, deep blonde hair catching in the light and shining, then began to cross the clearing. Her long cardigan fluttered daintily around her (bare?) feet and made her look all graceful and floaty, like a life-sized fairy or a woodland nymph. The dog followed closely behind her, stepping on her heels like it’d just been doing to Draco.

“I’m Luna,” she said when she finally reached them, holding out her soft, pale hand to shake Theo’s. Theo looked terrified, but he shook it anyway. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

 _That_ surprised Draco. 

“I—yes, I remember you.” Theo swallowed and dropped his hand, drawing it close to himself as if he’d just touched dry ice. “From Hogwarts.”

“Do you?” Luna’s eyebrows arched curiously. “That’s very kind. Most people from your year don’t remember me all that much.”

“You’re pretty unforgettable,” Greg blurted, apparently shocked out of his stupor. His face turned as red as the apples nestled in the trees, like he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. 

Lovegood looked at him and tilted her head thoughtfully. “Thank you. Gregory Goyle, right?”

“Er—yes.”

“I thought so.” Luna turned again, gaze re-settling on Draco. Nothing in her expression shifted, while Draco could feel his entire body tense, bracing himself for the worst. Maybe a punch in the nose, maybe worse. But all she said was, “Draco Malfoy,” tipping her head slightly in greeting. 

“Luna Lovegood,” he replied slowly, breathless and tight, walking on eggshells.

Then—out of all things that could _possibly_ happen—Lovegood broke into a soft smile and stepped forward, arms coming around Draco’s shoulders, and Draco felt every single one of his muscles freeze at the same time. 

“It’s good to see you,” she said to him, her voice now somewhere near his shoulder, and Draco was panicking. Panicking harder than he’d ever panicked before. Greg and Theo were staring at them like they’d both grown second heads.

“Luna—” he started, too afraid to move. Too afraid to do anything, really. “What—?”

She stepped back, but her hands were on his biceps, squeezing. Comforting, almost. She was still smiling, calm and effervescent. “I knew we’d run into each other again someday, I just didn’t realise it’d be this soon.”

“We–” Draco had to swallow the lump in his throat, but it felt permanently stuck there. “We just came to—return the dog.”

“I figured.” She was still smiling, Merlin. “That was very thoughtful of you. All of you.” Lovegood turned her smile to the lot of them, then down to the dog who was sniffing determinedly around her ankles. “She’s been going missing every morning for this past week. We were quite worried.” She reached down to scratch the dog’s head. “I knew she’d be alright, though. She’s very clever.” Lovegood looked back up at them. “Either way, Harry will be pleased you brought her back.”

Draco’s stomach fell so fast he could almost hear it thunk against the ground. All around him the atmosphere tensed; the wind seemed to stop blowing, the birds seemed to stop chirping.

“Harry… Potter?” Greg asked from behind, and Draco wanted to spin around and shake him silly because _yes, of course_ it was Harry Potter. What other Harry could it possibly be? How many Harrys were in the world? Draco only knew of one off the top of his head, and that one just happened to also be the only Harry that mattered. The only Harry that seemed to ever matter. He didn’t shake Greg, though, partially because that would be unfair to him, and partially because Draco didn’t think he could move if he tried.

“That’s the one,” Lovegood said, clearly not sensing the immense atmospherical shift, reaching down to scratch the dog again. “Phoebe belongs to him, so it makes sense that he was the most worried out of all of us. He went out this morning looking for her.”

Draco didn’t know what to do with that, so he decided to focus on the least potentially explosive topic in that sentence. “Phoebe?” he asked, cursing himself for sounding so meek. 

“That’s her name,” Lovegood clarified.

“Like... the goddess?”

She looked up at Draco again, eyes bright. “Yes, exactly.”

“Oh,” Draco said, feeling like his head might fall right off.

There was an awkward pause, broken by the caw of what sounded like a hen, and then Theo piped up again. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “We’re glad we could help. With the dog.”

Then—as if this day couldn’t get more unimaginable—Lovegood smiled earnestly and asked, “Would you boys like to come in for tea?”

* * *

“No,” was the first thing Harry said when he reached the bottom of the stairwell and saw three Slytherins sitting around his kitchen table, steaming mugs of tea poised untouched in front of them, looking for all the world like they had the permission to be sitting there.

Luna stood. “Harry,” she started.

“No,” he said again, backing into the entryway and wrapping his hand around the ridged frame to keep himself from falling over. “Get out.”

“Harry,” Luna repeated, and he couldn’t even begin to understand why she sounded so peaceful, so meditative, when there were three fucking Slytherins sitting at Harry’s kitchen table—specifically, one Draco Malfoy sitting at Harry’s kitchen table. One Draco Malfoy who was staring at him with eyes so wide they looked on the verge of popping right out and bouncing on Harry’s floor like ping pong balls. 

“Why are they here?” Harry demanded, tearing his eyes away from Malfoy and staring at Luna instead. “Did you let them in?”

Luna met his flaming gaze with her signature calmness, hands clasped in front of her like some sort of school teacher. “Yes,” she said, “I did. I wanted to thank them for bringing Phoebe back.”

“You—” Harry cut himself off, strangled. “What?”

Luna took a step sideways, and from behind her Harry’s dog came rushing forward, tail wagging excitedly as she launched herself at Harry’s legs and nearly knocked him over. 

“Nice of them, isn’t it?” Luna said peaceably as Harry steadied himself on the door frame and caught Phoebe half in his arms. “Draco was just telling me how they moved in next door about a week ago. Phoebe’s been wandering off to their backyard every morning since they got here.”

Harry couldn’t decide whether to stare at his dog or at the three nightmares from ages past sitting at his table. They were all looking at him as though he was a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any moment.

He was trying very hard not to explode. “They—a week ago?” he asked, strangled.

Luna nodded. “Yes.”

He felt something nasty flare up inside him. “You waited an entire week to return my dog to my fucking property?” he snarled, whirling to glare at the first Slytherin his eyes landed on, which happened to be Malfoy, because really, who else would it be?

His mouth was pressed into a thin line, caught somewhere between scared shitless and blazingly angry; his thin, pale hands were wrapped around the edge of the table bracingly. But he didn’t answer Harry—Theodore Nott did.

“To be fair, we didn’t know who she belonged to,” he said, pretentious and sandy-haired as ever. He was looking at Harry with a flat, unreadable expression, but his tone sounded practiced and unnervingly polite. “Someone breached our wards this morning, and we figured that was a good enough reason to meet our neighbours. Your dog had little to do with it.”

On the contrary, she had everything to do with it. “Your wards?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” came the stiff answer, this time from Malfoy himself. He wasn’t meeting Harry’s eyes, staring intently at the knotted wood table instead. His knuckles were nearly as white as his hair. “They’re anti-Apparition. We didn’t know other wizards lived around here.”

Harry exchanged a look with Luna; she met it apologetically, her brow creased and creating a small dip down the center of her forehead. “Yeah,” Harry responded slowly, leveling his gaze back on Malfoy’s bowed head. “We didn’t either.”

“Clearly,” Malfoy said, and Harry’s shoulders tensed.

“I’ve lived here for two years,” he replied harshly, curling his fingers into fists without realising. “There have been no other wizards in the area since then, and I’ve never had any problems with Phoebe. I don’t know what you lot have done to her, but if you could stop now, that would be brilliant.”

Malfoy lifted his head suddenly, eyes flaring in that way Harry was all too familiar with. “We haven’t done anything,” he spat, standing up, and Harry’s hand automatically went to his wand in the pocket of his trousers. Malfoy’s gaze flicked down to the movement, and his face twisted sourly. “Stand down, Potter, there’ll be no need for that.”

Harry grit his teeth. “Why bloody not?”

A gentle hand touched Harry’s shoulder, and he swiveled to look at Luna. “They don’t have magic, Harry,” she said softly. 

“What?” He looked back. There was fear on Malfoy’s face again; tired, timeworn fear. “How do you have wards, then?”

“They were there before we moved in,” a new voice replied. Gregory Goyle, big and lumbering as ever, shoulders curved like an inverted parenthesis.

“The house belongs to the Parkinson family,” Nott added after taking a curt sip of tea and setting down his mug— _Harry’s_ mug—on the table with a small clink. “It’s been in their family for years. They’re just letting us use it, for the time being.”

Harry’s gaze slid back to Malfoy on its own accord. He was still standing, one hand white-knuckled over the back of his chair—no, _Harry’s_ chair. “Parkinson’s here too?” Harry asked him, voice laden with malice. “Did you happen to bring the entire Slytherin dormitory with you, or did you just hand-pick the racist ones?”

There was a sharp intake of breath, and Malfoy’s face hardened like marble. “No,” he replied, low, through his teeth. “Unfortunately, it’s only the four of us including Pansy, not that a reunion wouldn’t be an absolute treat. Perhaps you should arrange one? I’m sure McGonagall would be pleased to host.”

Harry blinked. “I’d like you to leave, now.”

“Harry,” Luna said for the fourth time, but he brushed her off.

“No,” he said. “I can’t do this today. Sorry for breaking your wards, but I’d really like you to leave. You’re not welcome here.”

Malfoy stared, inscrutable and twisted, then sucked in an audible breath. “Fine. No need to ask twice.” He turned and stalked off towards the back door, nodding at Goyle and Nott to follow him, both of whom looked like they’d swallowed a pair of sour lemons.

“We need someone to fix the wards,” Nott said stiffly. “We—we can’t do it ourselves.”

“Call someone,” Harry suggested with fake politeness, then pointed at the door. “Out.”

Nott’s chair scraped as he stood. Goyle followed, but stopped to nod awkwardly at Luna. “Thanks for the tea.”

Luna’s mouth twitched sadly. “You’re welcome.”

Malfoy held the door for them, throwing one last brackish sneer at Harry before letting it fall closed behind him, effectively shutting out the cold morning. Suddenly, the room felt big again.

“Where’s Neville?” Harry asked after a stretched beat of silence, eyes fixed on the chipped paint of the door through the wire screen.

“He left for a lecture,” Luna said quietly, waving her hand to float the barely touched cups of tea towards the sink. They clattered as they dropped in, and Harry abruptly felt bad.

“I’m sorry, Luna, I just—” he frowned and rubbed at his temples. “I know you were trying to be nice, but I can’t deal with them. Not—not today.”

Luna nodded. “You don’t need to explain yourself, I understand. But it’s been years—you shouldn’t turn them away that fast. Aren’t you curious why they’re here?”

Harry stared at the door. Phoebe panted beside him, her tail swiping his ankles. 

“Yes,” he admitted faintly, thinking of Malfoy’s sharp, angled face, of his blanched hair sifting in a tumbling breeze, a crooked house with a sunken roof poised behind him, framed with green. “Yes, I am.”

* * *

The hinges of Draco’s bedroom door creaked, and a wedge of orange light spilled through, skewing across the faded shag rug and chalky hardwood.

“Draco?” came Pansy’s voice, soft and heedful. “Can I come in?”

Draco lifted his head from where it was tilted against the cool glass of the window, knees drawn up to his chest. He didn’t answer, instead meeting Pansy’s gaze across the darkened room and nodding slightly. 

She slipped inside and closed the door carefully behind her, handle clicking, then made her way slowly across the room and to the cushioned window seat where Draco was curled. 

“Hi,” she said quietly, mirroring him by sitting down and pulling her own knees up, resting her chin on them. She was wearing an oversized white t-shirt with sleeves that came down to her elbows. A pair of grey cotton shorts exposed her pale legs, supple under the slanting moonlight and dotted with small, soft, dark hairs. Her hair was down and her makeup was wiped away, the only remnants being dull smudges of grey around the corners of her eyes. 

“Going to bed?” Draco asked quietly, voice raspy as he flicked his gaze up to hers. He’d barely spoken since that morning, having been locked away in his bedroom since they returned from their jaunt through the woods, spending the rest of his day brooding, then crying a little, then brooding some more.

“Soon,” Pansy answered, sliding one of her feet in between Draco’s in what he assumed was a comforting gesture. “Are you feeling better?”

He stared at her socks. They were black and crew-cut, with little blue stripes near the hem. “Not particularly, no.”

She frowned sympathetically. “Greg saved you some macaroni in case you get hungry later. He feels horrible.”

“For what?”

“For forcing you to go with them to see Potter.”

“He didn’t force me,” Draco said to his knees, breaking his gaze away and staring at his own socks. White and plain, with little moth holes. “And he didn’t know we would end up seeing Potter. He’s got nothing to feel bad about.”

“I know,” Pansy replied, “but you know how he gets. He can’t control it.”

“I know.”

“You’ll eat some later to make him feel better?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know you’re not, but that’s no excuse to skip out on two meals. Did you even have breakfast this morning?”

“I had tea.”

Pansy narrowed her eyes. “Draco.”

Draco leaned his head back against the glass. “If I ate anything I think it’d just come right back up. I wouldn’t want Greg’s macaroni to end up in the toilet.”

Pansy poked his foot with her own. “You need to eat something. I’m not going to let you get bad again over this stupid thing.”

“I’m not your responsibility.”

“Draco,” she said again, harsher this time, lifting her chin. “You’re as much my responsibility as I am yours. We look out for each other, don’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. I won’t force you to eat right this second, but I want you to have something before you go to sleep. Promise me you’ll at least try?”

Draco stared at her, then acquiesced. “Fine.”

“Good.” She scooted closer so she could hook her leg around his. It wasn’t very comfortable, but Draco appreciated her closeness. Her warmth. “Now,” she said once she was settled, “tell me what’s on your mind.”

“You know what’s on my mind.”

“Just him?”

“Just him.”

Pansy frowned. “After all these years.”

“I know.”

“It’s like school again.”

“No,” Draco retorted, “it’s not. I was a twisted, confused, elitist piece of shit in school.”

“You’re still a piece of shit.”

“Yes, but not an elitist one. That makes a difference.”

Pansy rubbed his knee sympathetically. “I know it does. But Potter doesn’t.”

“Well, it’s not like I changed for his sake,” Draco said stormily.

“Obviously. That would be stupid of you, and even if you’re a piece of shit, you’re certainly not stupid.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “Don’t let him tie you up in knots again. We’re not sixteen.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Draco.”

“I know!” he burst out, lifting his head. “I know, you’re right. I just—I don’t know how to ignore him. He’s like a parasite in my brain that just won’t leave.”

“After four years?”

“After four fucking years.”

“What about Theo?” Pansy asked, eyes narrowed and searching. “Was he in your brain when you were with Theo?”

“First of all, I was never with Theo,” Draco argued. “And second of all, yes. He’s never bloody left my brain.”

“What do you mean, you weren’t _with_ Theo?”

“We hooked up twice,” Draco said, trying not to blush even though Pasny probably wouldn’t see it through the darkness. “That’s not—being _with_ someone. And we’re not doing that shit anymore, there are too many strings.”

“Just like there are too many strings with Potter?” Pansy crooked her eyebrow.

Draco put his forehead on his knees. “Right.” He lifted it again. “But I’m not trying to get into Potter’s pants, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Certainly not,” Pansy said seriously, then cracked a tiny, sly grin. “Even though that’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”

Draco kicked her. “ _Pansy._ ”

Pansy giggled, swiping her feet out of the way of his attack, then nudged at him to budge over. “Come here, you big oaf.” She scooted around on the bench so she was next to him instead of across, lifting her arm. “Come here.”

Draco did, shifting himself under her arm so it draped around his shoulders. He put his head on her shoulder, and she rubbed his arm soothingly up and down, rhythmic and predictable, how he liked it.

“I’m sorry you had a bad day,” she said softly, her cheek pressed against the top of his head. “But it’s all going to be fine. Even if we’re neighbors with the Chosen One, we’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

Draco blew air through his nose and closed his eyes. It felt like there was a hole in his chest. “I never thought I’d see him again.”

“I know.”

“I thought—this was over.”

“I know.” Pansy touched his hair lightly, brushing it away from his forehead. 

Draco opened his eyes again, surveying his dark bedroom, the rumpled duvet on his bed and the gently flickering oil lamp on his nightstand. “I don’t want my life to revolve around him anymore,” he said, nearly a whisper.

Pansy’s hand stilled, then she put two fingers under his chin and lifted it so their gazes met, serious and shadowed. “Then don’t let it.”


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Phoebe went missing again.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Harry groaned when he woke up and found the clump of blankets at the end of his bed empty. The whole house was empty, in fact, and for the first time in days, there were no stray Lunas or Nevilles straggling about in their pyjamas, making tea, or feeding the chickens. The kitchen was quiet, the hearth in the living room unlit, the backyard sheathed in feeble grey light. Harry didn’t mind being alone—he found it quite peaceful most of the time—but without Phoebe there, he felt suddenly and uncomfortably abandoned. 

However, the last thing he wanted to do was go searching for her and cross the property line again. He didn’t want to see Malfoy, or Nott, or Goyle, or Parkinson, or anyone. He just wanted his dog. 

_I’m not going next door,_ he thought to himself as he stared out the kitchen window, hands clenched stubbornly around his piping hot mug of coffee. _I’m going to wait until she comes back like she always does. I’m going to wait. I’m not going next door._

A minute passed, and Harry set his mug down. He was going next door.

The walk there was harder than the day before, what with the icy morning drizzle and autumn wind slapping against him, making the trees bow and quiver around him as he pushed through the greenery. By the time he made it to the rotted fence at the far end of the trail, his hair was a wet, frizzy mop plastered to his forehead and dripping into his eyes. The grassy meadow was empty, the clothesline gone, the flowers curled into themselves, but the windows of the lopsided house were a sign of life, gold and warm-looking. 

“Phoebe?” he called into the yard, squinting his eyes against the weather, but there was no response. He tried whistling after that, drawing further towards the center of the clearing, but it was no use. _At least she’s not out in the rain,_ he thought, then did a mental double-take. If she wasn’t in the rain, that meant she had to be inside—with Malfoy. And Nott, and Goyle, and Parkinson, the exact people Harry did not want to talk to. 

There was a squeak of door hinges, and someone came onto the porch. Someone with obnoxiously white hair and a black windbreaker. 

“Come to break our wards again?” he asked loudly, folding his arms against the cold and leveling Harry with a crafted deadpan.

Harry scowled and shoved his hands into his pockets, unwilling to seem even the slightest bit pleased at the sight of another living thing. “You know exactly what I’ve come for. Give me my dog back.”

“Ah, you’ve come to harass me, then.”

“Malfoy,” Harry said through his teeth, stepping around an overturned lawn chair and coming to stand at the bottom of the porch. 

“Fix my wards and I’ll give you your dog back.”

“I’m not fucking bartering with you!”

Malfoy shrugged, unfazed. “Fine. She can stay here. Pansy’s been feeding her bits of scrambled egg all morning, so I’m sure she won’t mind staying.”

“You can’t kidnap my dog.” 

“She came to _me_ , Potter, not the other way around. I haven’t kidnapped anything.”

“I don’t care!” Harry exploded, clomping up the wooden steps and holding tight to the railing so he wouldn’t do something rash, like hex Malfoy’s ears off. “I’m not playing games with you. If you couldn’t tell, we’re not in school anymore, and I’m not going to put up with your shit.”

“Obviously we’re not in school anymore,” Malfoy replied flatly. “Though I’m surprised you noticed, given how your observational skills have been somewhat lacking over the years.” He flicked his gaze up. “Also given the fact that you still look like you’ve been dragged by your ankles through a field of cacti. Is that how your hair naturally looks, or do you have a special routine that helps it defy gravity?”

“Christ,” Harry said. “You haven’t changed a smidge, have you?”

Malfoy’s face darkened, and he rolled his shoulders back so his chest puffed up. “Not in the ways that matter to you, apparently.”

“What—does that even mean?”

A pause. Then, “I’m not giving your dog back until our wards are fixed.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Evasion, well done.”

“I’m serious, Potter.”

“So am I, and my answer’s still no. You shouldn’t have wards up if you can’t do magic.”

“The fact that we can’t do magic is all the more reason to have them up.” Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “Not to mention that I distinctly remember telling you that they were up before we arrived here.”

“And I distinctly remember _not caring_.”

Malfoy’s pinkish mouth thinned. “In the words of a famous man, I’d like you to leave now.”

“And I’d like my dog back, but clearly that’s not happening anytime soon.”

“She’ll come back before lunch like she’s been doing every single day, or have you not noticed?”

Harry scowled. “I’ve noticed.”

“Brilliant,” Malfoy said drily. “Glad we have that cleared up. If you could kindly step off my porch now, I would sincerely appreciate it.”

“No.”

“Potter—”

“ _No._ I’m not leaving without her.”

Malfoy’s brow screwed up in frustration, then almost automatically smoothed back down. “Fine,” he said, taking a breath in. “Don’t leave. But you’re not coming inside.”

“Fine,” Harry spat.

“Fine,” Malfoy repeated, then proceeded to spin around and slam the door shut, leaving Harry alone on the porch, dripping wet. 

Without much else left to do, he turned in his place and sat roughly against the second-to-last step of the stairs, heels digging into the mud and rain spattering his ankles. The wood porch covering stuck out just far enough to prevent the rest of him from getting wet, but the cold was harsh enough as it was. “Fucking Malfoy,” Harry muttered under his breath as he pulled his jacket tighter around himself, curving his shoulders and battening down his hatches like a ship in the midst of a raging storm.

* * *

“Holy shit,” Pansy said, mouth open in a wide ‘O’ as she stared through the living room window into the backyard. “Draco, why is Harry Potter sitting on our porch?”

Greg looked up from the television. “Harry Potter’s sitting on our porch?”

“Harry Potter?” Theo asked from the kitchen, spoon clattering into his bowl of cereal.

Draco scowled as he shucked his jacket off, flinging it over the back of the floral-patterned couch before collapsing onto it. “He’s come to terrorise us.”

“What for?” Pansy asked disbelievingly, face lit up with a mix of delight and enmity, like she couldn’t decide which one was more fitting. 

“He wants his dog back,” Draco sighed, kicking his feet up and narrowly missing the lump of damp fur curled on the carpet next to the coffee table, heaving slightly. She’d been there since Draco had come down from his bedroom that morning, apparently having been let in by Pansy moments earlier to get out of the wretched weather. “Which is understandable, I suppose, but for now I’m using her as leverage.”

“Leverage for what?”

“For fixing our wards.”

“Smart lad,” Theo said through a mouthful of his breakfast, gesturing approvingly across the kitchen counter with his spoon.

“Isn’t that animal cruelty?” Pansy asked, turning her back on the window with her hands poised on her hips. She was still in pyjamas—they all were, in fact, all except for Draco himself—and she looked rather ridiculous, her huge t-shirt coming down to her knees and making her look half-undressed. “Yesterday you were lecturing me about the gender binary of canines, and now you’re using one for blackmail? You’ve changed your tune.”

“I’m making a political move,” Draco informed her, then stretched down to pat the half-asleep dog gently on her head. “No animals will be harmed in the process, I promise.”

“Merlin,” Greg said, eyes fixed on the window, television program forgotten entirely. “Is Potter making a political move, too? He looks miserable.”

“Something like that.”

“He’s bound to catch a nasty cold,” Pansy added, scrunching her nose.

“Unfortunately, he still has magic, so I seriously doubt it,” Draco said. “And since when did you start caring about his health?”

“I don’t! Although it might raise some eyebrows if he died from pneumonia in our backyard.” 

“True,” Theo agreed, bobbing his head. “We’d probably be tried for the murder of a national treasure.”

“Is he really a national treasure?” Greg wondered out loud. 

“Pretty sure he was at one point,” Draco answered, sinking low onto the sofa to have a better view of the window. Sure enough, Potter was still there, a dark silhouette against the stark greens and yellows of the meadow, all pigmented and rich with rain. He looked miserable, hunched in on himself and hunkered against the wind. Draco frowned, then felt a strange, hot wiggle in the middle of his chest, but decided to ignore it in favor of adding, “He might not be one anymore, though. Is living alone on a farm in the middle of nowhere an award-worthy achievement?” If it was, Draco wanted a medal.

“I think once people become national treasures, they stay that way,” Theo responded, but he sounded thoughtful. “Unless they go and murder someone, or something. They’d have to get their privileges revoked then.”

“I would hope so,” Pansy said feelingly, coming to plop next to Draco on the sofa. “How long do you think he’ll stay out there?”

Draco shrugged. “Until he gets his dog back.”

“So… noon-ish?”

“That’s my guess.” 

Pansy grinned and tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling. “Merlin,” she said again, then rolled her head to look at Draco’s profile. “Are you alright?” she asked, lowering her voice so only he could hear. Theo and Greg were both occupied with staring out the window, so he doubted they would hear her either way.

“Fine,” he replied firmly. “Just peachy.”

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw her forehead crinkle. “If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

Eager to change the subject and stop thinking about the hurricane of a man that was currently sitting on their back steps, Draco shifted on the couch and asked, “What are we watching?”

Greg tore his gaze away from the window, dazed. “Oh—er, _Weakest Link_.”

“Brilliant. Who’s winning?”

*

The morning slid by on lazy tracks, the sky slowly beginning to brighten as noon grew closer, and Potter was still loitering outside. He wasn’t hunched over on the steps anymore, now that the rain had let up and was nothing but a weak mist, ghosting the windows and blurring Draco’s view.

Draco was observing the scene from his bedroom on the top floor, grateful for the fact that it faced the backyard so he could keep tabs on Potter and make sure he didn’t do anything genuinely rash, like tear up the flowerbeds or set fire to the patio furniture. He didn’t seem to be doing anything of the sort—he was mostly wandering in circles, skimming his fingers over the bushels of lavender and leaning down to sniff the rosemary—but Draco didn’t want to let him out of sight either way. The dog was still lounging about indoors, following Pansy around the halls and snoozing on Draco’s neatly-made bed while he paced back and forth, trying not to fixate on Potter’s presence but failing miserably. 

At one point, Pansy knocked on his half-open door and stuck her head inside, disrupting his brooding long enough to announce, “I’m going down to the ravine for a swim. Care to join me?”

“And leave Potter unsupervised?” Draco replied incredulously, stopping abruptly in the middle of the room. “No, thank you.”

“He’s not a child, Draco. What are you expecting him to do? Set the yard on fire?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Then put a leash on him, if you’re so worried. Merlin.”

Draco’s brain short-circuited as an unwelcome image of Harry Potter attached to a dog leash flashed before his eyes, and he quickly shook it away. The ball of heat in his chest wiggled uncomfortably for the second time that morning. “It’s raining, you know,” he called after Pansy’s retreating figure, her rubber flip-flops slapping loudly against the stairs. 

“More exciting that way!” she called back, and Draco sighed inwardly. If she caught a cold, that was entirely her problem.

From his bed, Potter’s dog lifted her head and let loose a huge yawn before settling back down, digging her long nose into Draco’s comforter. “You’re ridiculous,” he told her, receiving nothing but a small sniff in his direction. 

As he was turning back to continue staring probingly out the window, something small and round pinged sharply off the glass. He startled, jerking backwards so his back hit the bedpost, startling the dog as well and making her head lurch up. The noise came again a moment later, so Draco approached the window and looked down to see Potter staring intently up at him, a collection of small, dime-sized pebbles clenched in his hand. 

Draco opened the window.

“Are you throwing rocks at me?”

Potter, the git, looked down at his hand, then back up. “At your window, actually.”

“Let me rephrase. Are you trying to be arrested for destruction of private property?”

“I saw you in the window.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Potter ignored him. “Is Phoebe up there with you?”

Draco folded his arms. “No.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Phoebe!” Potter called suddenly, voice pitching up a whole octave, and the dog jumped up and barreled towards the window. 

“No, no, get down,” Draco hissed, trying to swat her away. “Down!”

“See?” Potter chirped. “You’re a liar.”

Draco gave up on battling the dog away from the windowsill in favor of glowering down at him. “Don’t you have better things to be doing with your day? Cows to milk or sheep to herd, perhaps?”

“Well I would, but you see, this colossal piece of shit kidnapped my sheepdog and won’t give her back, so unfortunately I can’t do that.”

Draco paused. “Do you actually have sheep?”

“No. But I’d still like my dog back, please.”

“Who’s the liar now?”

“Oh my god,” Potter groaned, dropping his handful of pebbles into the grass and scrubbing a hand down his face. “Malfoy, I’ve been out here for over an hour.”

“And I haven’t the faintest idea why,” Draco said airily. “No one’s forcing you.”

“You’re forcing me!”

“I am not! I tried to be diplomatic by making you an offer, and you turned me down. Therefore _you_ are the only thing keeping you here. It’s a bit ridiculous, actually.”

“This whole thing is a bit ridiculous,” Potter informed him.

“It is,” Draco agreed, propping his elbows on the windowsill. “You do realise that you could’ve fixed the wards about eight times around since you’ve been out there, don’t you?”

“So?”

“So my offer still stands.”

Potter’s mouth twisted nastily, as if he was bracing himself for another argument, but he stopped halfway through. With what looked like some difficulty, he let his rigid shoulders drop and his head tilt back. “Okay,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I said okay. I’ll do it. You win.”

The elastic band of tension binding Draco’s chest immediately snapped, and a monstrous grin broke out on his face before he could even begin to reign it in. “You’re serious?”

“Yes,” Potter said, looking pained. “As long as you give my dog back, yes.”

“That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

“I—yes.”

Draco’s grin stretched, wicked and wide. “I’ll be right down.”

* * *

Before letting him inside, Malfoy forced Harry to cast a thorough drying spell over his damp clothes and waterlogged trainers so he didn’t track any mud into the house. “No house elves to clean up after you?” Harry asked as he did so, jutting his bottom lip out in faux-sympathy.

Malfoy, arms folded, simply replied, “Bite me.”

Harry gave him the finger, and Malfoy stepped back from the threshold and let him inside. 

If the house looked similar to Harry’s from the outside, the inside was an entirely different world altogether. Whereas Harry’s kitchen was cluttered with over-eager houseplants, hanging copper pots, and cheerfully patterned crockery, Malfoy’s was practically a wasteland. The counters were empty and coated with dust, smattered with small circular rings where water glasses or mugs must have been set down at one point. The dining table was home to one meager-looking fruit bowl that didn’t hold any fruit—only a ring of keys, a pile of loose change, and a crumpled takeout menu. 

“The wards are in the basement,” Malfoy explained as he continued onward through the entryway of the depressing kitchen into an even more depressing living room, dominated by a frumpy sofa and a sagging coffee table that looked about a century old. There was also a tiny television set shoved into the corner, its antenna wonkily bent out of shape and its screen covered in fingerprints.

“Nice place,” Harry commented, and Malfoy shot him a glare before fiddling with the handle of a skinny door off to the side of the room. It took him a moment to get it open, the eggshell-colored paint sticky and unyielding, and he nearly stumbled into Harry once he finally got it unstuck. 

“This way,” he said, slightly out of breath, brandishing his arm to the black void that awaited just beyond the threshold. “You go first. There’s a light switch at the bottom of the stairs.”

Part of Harry wanted to argue with Malfoy and maybe shove him down said set of stairs, but the other part of him was aching to get this over with and go home after being stuck outside in the cold for so long. He shouldered past Malfoy and stepped into the darkness, feeling around the wall for a railing he could grab onto, but finding nothing but slightly damp brick. Sighing, he kept one hand on the wall and began to slowly make his way down the stairs, making sure to walk in as straight a line as possible to avoid falling flat on his face. Behind him, he could feel Malfoy’s strangely noticeable body heat at the back of his neck like a furnace, bleeding into the darkness. Something smelled strongly of burnt sage.

“Do you feel the switch?” Malfoy asked when they reached the apparent bottom, and Harry groped around the brick wall until his fingers passed over something hard and plastic. He flicked it on, and the basement flooded with light, yellow and flickering. Harry took one look around the room and sneezed. 

“No one’s cleaned down here in over a decade,” Malfoy said from behind him, nose scrunched as he swatted away plumes of agitated dust and headed towards a rectangular brick niche across from the rickety stairwell. “Wards are this way.” 

Harry followed him, trying to hold in another sneeze, but failing. There must have been a whole foot of dust coating the flagstone floor and the ancient-looking shelves, all of which were completely empty. There was a spiky metal thing on the opposite wall that Harry thought might be an old-timey furnace, but he wasn’t completely sure. He didn’t even know if wizard houses needed furnaces in the first place.

“Are they standard wards, or just anti-Apparition?” Harry asked as he came up behind Malfoy to peer into the brick niche where a suspended set of complicated runes shimmered dully under the washed-out light.

“They should be standard.” Malfoy eyed the array of runes distastefully. “I can’t believe they’re this small. The Manor had an entire room dedicated to wards.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I hate to break it to you, but the Manor is about twenty times bigger than this place. My house doesn’t even have a wards compartment, let alone an entire room.”

Malfoy looked at him sharply. “You don’t have wards?”

“No, I do, they’re just not the kind you install into the house. I put them up manually.”

“Why on earth would you do something like that?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m not good at foundational wards.”

Malfoy stared at him, then at the runes, then back at him. “You—have got to be kidding me.”

“You asked me to fix yours, so I’ll try and fix yours. But I can’t promise anything.”

“Merlin and Morgana both.” Malfoy’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling, like he couldn’t stand to look at Harry in the face. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this.”

“Forcing, actually. I gladly won’t do it if you don’t want me to,” Harry offered. 

“No.” Malfoy put his hand up. “No, they need to be fixed, and you’re the only other bloody wizard within a thirty-kilometer radius who can do that. I can help a bit with translating, but without magic I can’t—” He paused, frustrated. “Just— _please_ don’t break anything.”

“Like I said, I’ll do my best,” Harry said lightly, nudging him out of the way so he could get a better look at the sequence of runes. They starkly contrasted with the grimy brick compartment they were set into, pulsing faintly with light and casting odd shadows on the cobwebs in the darkened corners. It was true that Harry was absolute pants when it came to rune magic—especially given that he hadn’t dealt with any since he moved out to the countryside—but as he looked closer, he managed to recognise a couple of the more basic symbols. Hermione would’ve been able to translate the entire thing just by looking at it, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option right now. “Can you translate that first sequence?” Harry asked, slipping his wand out of his sleeve and tapping on the top line of runes.

Malfoy squinted and bent closer, standing almost directly behind Harry. The smell of sage was overly pungent, like a thick, invisible cloud enveloping around Harry. “I don’t know what the last symbol is,” he started, “but I assume the first part says something ominous like _thou shan’t cross through the Realm into or from this estate_ .”

“Is that Shakespeare for ‘no Apparating’?”

“Shakespeare is far, _far_ out of the runic time period, but yes. That would be my guess.”

“Brilliant.” If these were standard wards, the breakage wouldn’t be too hard to find. Harry had adjusted the wards at Grimmauld Place once upon a time, back when his face was on the cover of _The Prophet_ every other day and he needed to keep the stream of reporters at bay. Those had been much more complicated runes, but there had also been plenty of damage Harry hadn’t risked touching. 

“Is that it, there?” Malfoy asked, reaching his hand over Harry’s shoulder and pointing at a small gap in the sequence where the runes were faded and dull.

“Should be,” Harry replied, skimming his wand to the area and feeling a slight ripple of magic. “Yes, that’s it. What symbol is missing, do you think?”

“ _Algiz,_ probably. Protection.”

“The stick-shaped one?”

“Yes. Do you know the enchantment?”

“Yes, I know the bloody enchantment.”

“Do it, then.”

Suppressing another eye-roll, Harry adjusted the tip of his wand and began murmuring a low string of syllables that wasn’t exactly Latin, but sounded eerily similar to it. It was something Germanic that Hermione had taught him years ago, and it sounded a bit clunky coming out of his mouth, but he didn’t have the energy to care. He just wanted to get this over with. 

The tip of his wand lit up silver, and he slowly began to trace a small diamond shape against the dimpled brick, restoring the faded rune and making it pulse brighter than the rest. “There,” he said when the chant was finished and the diamond was whole, pulling his wand away. “That should’ve done it.”

Malfoy bent over his shoulder again to eye the sequence critically, brow knit. “Hm,” he grunted noncommittally. 

“Can I have my dog back, now?” 

“No, not yet.” Malfoy straightened up, shoulders rolling under his dark plum-colored jumper. “We need to see if it worked or not. Try Apparating.”

“What—?”

“Just do it, Potter. I don’t want you to be here just as much as you don’t want to be here.” 

“I—fine, alright.” Teeth grinding, Harry clenched his wand in his hand and focused on the first location that popped into his head. For some reason, that happened to be the little curved bridge over the stream that ran through his side of the property, the one that was potentially tall enough to row a gondola under—but nothing happened. An invisible force blocked Harry’s attempt to squeeze through space, a force that he remembered tearing through the last time around.

“It worked,” he declared, opening his eyes to find Malfoy staring at him with hawk-like intensity. It was a bit startling—so much so that Harry accidentally noticed that Malfoy’s eyes were the same silvery color as the runes.

“You’re positive?” Malfoy asked, blinking.

“Yes.”

“You’re not just faking it so you can get your dog back?”

“No. I’m not a Slytherin.”

The muscle above Malfoy’s mouth twitched. “Right, how could I have possibly forgotten.”

“Where’s Phoebe?”

“Upstairs.”

“Can I go get her?”

Malfoy flung his arm out towards the staircase. “Be my guest.”

Harry opened his mouth to say “thank you,” then decided that Malfoy didn’t deserve thanks, given that he’d quite literally kidnapped Harry’s dog and then forced him into a basement. So, instead, he just stowed his wand into his back pocket and pushed past Malfoy, barely resisting the urge to roughly shoulder him into the wall and maybe spit on his shoes. 

When he reached the top of the stairs, he almost ran headfirst into someone—Gregory Goyle, in fact. Gregory Goyle wearing plaid pyjamas and holding a tin watering can that looked miniature in his huge hands. He froze when he saw Harry, eyes widening astronomically. “Uh,” he stalled, throat working, then held up his watering can. “Sorry, I’m—watering the plants.”

 _What plants?_ Harry wanted to ask, given that there wasn’t a single houseplant dead or alive in sight, but he didn’t ask. Instead he just nodded shortly and slipped out of the room, not really wanting to engage with a man whose parents had most likely murdered one or two of Harry’s classmates. 

Around the corner, there was another set of stairs—less rickety, but just as dusty as the ones in the basement—that crawled up into where he assumed the bedrooms were. “Phoebe?” he called, then sagged in relief when he heard the telltale click of paws and the jingle of metal dog tags. She appeared at the top of the stairs and whined happily when she saw Harry, bumbling down them ungracefully and nearly slipping on the hardwood. “Stupid animal,” Harry said affectionately, rubbing her mane and mussing up the fur around her ears. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

Malfoy was locking the door to the basement when Harry passed back through, herding Phoebe along at his side. Malfoy looked up, gaze haggard, hair hanging limply in front of his forehead, then pressed his mouth tight and looked away. It seemed like he wanted to say something extremely badly, but Harry didn’t want to hear it, whatever it was.

“No more kidnapping my dog,” Harry demanded, hooking one finger around Phoebe’s collar to keep her close to him. 

“No more breaking my wards,” Malfoy shot back, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Deal. We’re not shaking on it, though.”

Malfoy still didn’t look at him. “No, of course not.”

Without anything more to say, Harry bit the fleshy part on the inside of his cheek and turned away, nudging Phoebe along with him as he opened the back door. It wasn’t raining anymore. Goyle stood at one end of the porch with his watering can tipped into a window box of drooping tulips. He glanced up, then immediately back down, his entire body tensing as Harry passed him; there didn’t seem to be any liquid coming out of the watering can. 

Harry was nearly at the bottom of the steps when he heard a soft cough from behind him. “What’s she the goddess of?”

He turned to find Goyle staring after him intently, stubby fingers as white as snow as they clutched the watering can. Harry was afraid he’d crush the thing if he gripped any tighter. “Sorry?”

“Your dog,” Goyle clarified, sounding somewhat shaky. “Luna—er, Lovegood said she was the goddess of something. Her name, I mean. It’s Phoebe, isn’t it?”

Harry blinked. “It—yeah, it is. She’s the goddess of light. The actual Phoebe, not my dog.”

“Right,” Goyle said, nodding. Then, strangely, he added, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry replied slowly, and then Goyle turned away and continued to water his dying tulips with his empty watering can. Harry thought that could be symbolic of something, but he wasn’t sure what.

*

“I want to invite the Slytherins over for dinner,” Luna declared a day later while she was perched on the top step of her ladder, basket almost filled to the brim with ripe pink apples.

“Excuse me?” Harry replied, nearly hitting his head on a branch.

“A dinner party! It could be fun. I’d love to catch up with them. Neville might be a bit hesitant, but I’m sure I could convince him.”

“Luna,” Harry said, ducking around the thick branch that had been inches away from concussing him so he could look at Luna in the neighbouring tree. “Sorry, but that’s an absolutely horrible idea. The worst, actually. I can’t think of anything that would be more horrible than inviting them over for dinner.”

“They’re your neighbours, Harry. Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious as to why they’re out here together?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“Of course it’s your business! Phoebe certainly seems attracted to them.”

“She certainly is not,” Harry argued, wrinkling his nose as he pulled at a particularly stubborn sprig of foliage that was in his way. “She’s just—she’s confused.”

“Confused about what?”

“About the Slytherins! She probably sensed their magic or something and sought it out because she didn’t know what it was. She’s not _attracted_ to them.”

“But they don’t have magic,” Luna pointed out, then tilted her head thoughtfully. “Though I’m not sure if not being able to perform magic would get rid of their individual magical signatures. I’ll have to look into that.”

“What’s that all about, anyway?” Harry griped, tugging himself up his own ladder and adjusting the basket slung precariously over his shoulder. “Did every single one of them get their magic taken by the Ministry? And if so, wouldn’t their parole have ended by now?”

“See, those are the kinds of questions you could ask if we invited them for dinner.”

Harry sighed and let his head thunk against a branch. He couldn’t win here. “I’m not inviting them over, Luna, end of story. It would be a complete disaster.”

* * *

“Potter’s invited us over for dinner,” Pansy announced, dropping a thin white postcard onto the kitchen counter in front of Draco’s half-eaten bowl of Wheaties.

Draco’s spoon clattered, splashing his freshly-ironed shirt with milk. “He’s done _what?_ ”

Pansy shrugged, sliding the note closer with her stiletto-shaped fingernail. “Read it yourself. It looks like it was written by Lovegood—there are hearts above the i’s—but it came from the address next door. They suggested this Friday.”

Jaw unhinged, Draco picked up the card. Sure enough, a brief, noticeably informal dinner invitation requesting was scribbled in orange ink across the postcard. In the corner near the signature was a small, crude doodle of what looked to be a frog in a bowtie holding a serving platter, no doubt drawn by Lovegood herself. “Merlin’s balls,” Draco said.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“This cannot be real.”

“I thought he hated us?”

“Oh, he does. He thinks we’re the scum of the Earth, as far as I know,” Draco said, nodding. “I have a feeling that Lovegood is behind it. She was oddly nice to me when we—” He paused. “Well, you know.”

“Right, yes. But how did she convince him to invite us over? He was about ready to chop your head off the other day.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Pansy raised her eyebrows. “Should we go?”

Draco dropped the card, frowning. “I don’t know. We have to, don’t we? It would be a crime against humanity to turn down an invitation from the Chosen One.”

“What would be a crime against humanity?” Theo asked through a yawn as he padded into the kitchen, one side of his hair sticking up completely vertical like he’d just been electrocuted. 

“Your hair,” Pansy chirped. 

He sighed. “I walked into that one. What’s happening? Is there coffee?”

Draco slid the card towards him. “This is happening.”

Theo stared at the note for a long, unblinking moment, then squinted. “That can’t be right. D’you think Potter drew the frog?”

“I highly doubt it.”

“Hm,” Theo hummed blearily, turning the note over in his hands. “Well, it’s a nice addition. I need coffee to process this.”

“Kettle’s all yours,” Draco said, waving his hand. 

As Theo stumbled away towards the unlit stove, Pansy looked back at Draco sharply. “So, we’re going?”

“Do we have another option?” Draco asked, pained.

“I don’t think we do.”

*

So, Friday evening, when the sky was bruised pink and the crickets were beginning to bloat the shadows with their chirps, Pansy, Theo, Greg, and Draco walked through the woods and over the little splintered bridge to attend a dinner party at Harry Potter’s house.

It was—for lack of a better word—completely, indescribably bizarre.

Unsurprisingly, Lovegood was the one to answer the door. Her smile was huge and welcoming, teeth gleaming in the supple evening light as she stepped back and said, “Please, come in.” Her hair was done up in intricate plaits and dotted with multicolored butterfly clips, some of which seemed to be moving. It might’ve just been a trick of the light, but it made her look ethereal. “Pansy Parkinson,” she greeted as Pansy and Draco stepped into the foyer, Pansy holding her coat tight around herself, Draco gripping onto a plastic tin of Greg’s homemade brownies.

“Luna Lovegood,” Pansy greeted back, equally as calm. 

“You look lovely.” Lovegood held out her hand amicably. Pansy shook it, shoulders back and chin lifted, but Draco didn’t miss the way she went a little red around the ears.

“As do you.”

They both looked lovely, if Draco was being honest; Pansy had worn her favorite pair of black high-waisted flares and a silken blouse under her coat that exposed her neckline, sleek and deliberate. She was dressed like Lovegood’s polar opposite, but in such a way that made them almost complimentary. Like Draco was looking at two sides of the same coin. 

Lovegood’s smile deepened graciously. “Thank you.” She turned her gaze on the rest of the group. “You all look very nice. We’re not quite finished cooking dinner, but there’s a cheese board and a bottle of daisy wine in the living room down the hall. Do make yourselves comfortable.”

“We—um.” Draco coughed a little and held out the tin. “We brought dessert. Greg made them.”

Lovegood’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, immediately taking the tin from him and cracking the lid open. “Oh, goodness! How kind of you. We’ve been eating apple tart for weeks, so this will definitely be a nice change of pace. And I bet they’ll go perfectly with the wine. Neville?” she called suddenly, turning towards the short hallway. “Neville, everyone’s arrived. Can you grab the bottle opener?”

“Which drawer?” came the response, shouted from the kitchen. 

“The top one next to the sink, I think!”

“Oh, okay, yeah, found it.” Without warning, Neville Longbottom appeared in the hall, holding a metal contraption that Draco assumed was the bottle opener. He seemed to pale a bit at the sight of Draco and the rest, but he quickly shook it off and plastered on a placid smile. “Hello. Living room’s through this way.”

Lovegood waved her hand to beckon them into the hallway, so Draco sucked in a breath and followed her into the next room, Pansy close behind him. Greg and Theo had yet to say a word, and now that he thought about it, Draco could barely hear if they were breathing or not. He wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t.

The layout of the house was similar to theirs, with narrow hallways and arched doorways, but the living room was significantly smaller and significantly more furnished. There was a well-loved sofa in the middle, strewn with oddly patterned throw pillows, a pair of mismatched velveteen armchairs, twinkling lamps and hanging plants galore. The fireplace was roaring gold, and the smell of ash and woodsmoke buzzed around the room like static. 

“Sit anywhere you like,” Lovegood said, easing herself onto the arm of the sofa and casting her own over the room, as if presenting a piece of artwork. There was a plentiful cheese platter complete with grapes, sliced apple, and dehydrated dates sitting nicely in the center of the coffee table, surrounded by stray books and empty glass flutes. It was hard not to be impressed by the presentation of it all—even though that was the last thing Draco wanted to do. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly to Lovegood, trying not to feel awkward as he slipped his coat off and sunk down into one of the armchairs. It sprang under him and molded to his lower back, like it was made exactly for him. 

Pansy sat in the chair opposite Draco, looking far more graceful than he probably did, crossing her ankles and leaning on one elbow so she looked carefully casual. That left Greg and Theo to take the couch, though they didn’t look too pleased about it—Greg looked as white as a sheet as he sat down in the space next to where Lovegood was perched, sloping sideways so he didn’t accidentally bump into her. 

“Oh, I’ll take those for you,” Lovegood said, snapping her fingers so all of their coats lifted out of their hands and floated out of the room, presumably to a coat rack or hall closet somewhere nearby. Draco watched his go with a sharp pang in his chest, wishing he could be the one snapping his fingers. 

“You have a lovely home,” Pansy complimented after all their jackets had disappeared into the hall, clasping her hands over her knees.

“It’s not our home, but thanks,” Longbottom replied as he popped open a plump jade-colored bottle of wine in with his metal contraption, bent over the coffee table. 

“It’s not?” Pansy asked, eyebrows arching. “Whose is it, then?”

“It’s mine,” a new voice sounded from the doorway, stilted and gruff, recognizable in a heartbeat. “They’re just squatters who won’t leave.”

Potter was standing with a stack of plates piled high in his arms, back arched slightly to keep them from slipping. Longbottom scoffed light-heartedly at the sight of him, dismissing his statement with a whimsical wave of the bottle opener. “Completely untrue. You asked us to be here.” He looked over his shoulder at Pansy and Draco and repeated, quieter, “He asked us to be here.”

“Right,” Pansy said slowly, dimples creasing in amusement. “Hello, Harry Potter. You have a lovely home.”

“Thank you,” Potter replied dutifully, adjusting the mountain of plates in his arms. He looked—to Draco’s utter disappointment—undeniably charming, backlit by the soft light from the kitchen, dressed in beige slacks and a linen shirt, sleeves rucked up to the elbows and exposing the deep brown tan of his forearms. He was wearing bracelets, Draco noticed—little woven ones with knots at the end and beads in the middle, tangled together around his wrists. 

“Potter,” Draco said before he could stop himself, his tongue with a mind of its own. 

Potter looked over as if noticing him for the first time. “Malfoy,” he replied, tilting his chin up. 

Not sure what else to say, Draco grabbed the first subject that popped into his mind. “How’s your dog?”

A dark, disbelieving eyebrow quirked. “She’s perfectly fine, thank you. How’re your wards?”

“Fine.”

“Good.” They stared at each other a second longer, then Potter broke eye contact, apparently satisfied. “We’re having vegetable linguine for dinner, it should be done in a few minutes. I don’t have enough dining chairs for all of us, so we’ll have to eat in here. I hope that’s alright with all of you.”

It almost sounded like he was daring one of the Slytherins to say something snooty, either about his cooking or his lack of furniture. But Draco couldn’t blame him for the furniture thing, and linguine did sound quite good. If he wanted snooty, he wasn’t giving Draco much material to work off of. 

“Fine with me,” Pansy approved.

“Me too,” Theo jumped in, clearly anxious to say something before his silence got weirder. Greg didn’t add anything, but he nodded his head stiffly, like a puppet on a wire.

“Brilliant,” Potter said, and then he was gone again, disappearing into the kitchen, leaving Draco and his friends to the painfully earnest faces of Lovegood and Longbottom.

There was a long, cumbersome beat of silence, broken only by the slosh of wine Longbottom began pouring into an array of empty glasses. It was awkward. Incredibly, painfully awkward, so much so that Draco wanted his seat to open up under him and engulf him into a black hole—one that took him far, far away from this living room. 

But then Longbottom handed Draco a chock-full glass of wine, and Pansy leaned forward to ask, “So, what are you all doing nowadays?” and Draco knew he was stuck.

* * *

“Tell me,” Parkinson started, winding a strand of hair around her pointer finger and staring curiously at Neville across the coffee table. “Does your university have a bell schedule? Like the ones in muggle films?”

“No, unfortunately,” Neville answered from his place on the carpet in front of the fireplace, half-finished bowl of linguine balanced precariously on his knee. “That would certainly be helpful, but we just have to go off our watches. Although, all the different seminars and lectures start at staggered times during the day, so a bell schedule would be a bit confusing.”

“Disappointing,” Parkinson sighed, popping a piece of steamed squash into her mouth. “I didn’t even realise they had higher education for wizards, let alone things like herbology. It does sound fascinating, though, even without bells.”

“You didn’t know?” Malfoy asked incredulously, sitting up in Harry’s favorite armchair. “How in Salazar’s name did you not know? My parents talked my ear off about university every chance they could. They were quite set on me studying economics at Oglidreth after graduating from Hogwarts.”

“Yes, well, my mother was quite set on me being a housewife,” Parkinson replied, rolling her eyes skyward and sinking back into her chair. “I think she was even hesitant to send me to Hogwarts, let alone university. She didn’t want me to be ‘indoctrinated.’ A witch’s role is in the home, after all.”

Harry wrinkled his nose, thinking briefly of his aunt Petunia, then shook the image away in favor of stabbing a clump of pasta and twirling it around his fork. He was determinedly trying not to make too much eye contact with the Slytherins, afraid that doing so would be the potential catalyst for a fist fight. He hated how they were sitting in his living room and eating his food—the living room that he’d furnished all on his own, the living room that he ate and slept in, the living room that was far more intimate than any other room in his house—but he was also determined to make Luna happy.

That was the whole reason he was letting this happen in the first place: to make Luna happy. To give her something to look forward to, because apparently she needed something like that and Harry hadn’t even noticed until she told him. 

“I just want to give them a chance,” she’d insisted, her round, lovely eyes pleading and blue, and Harry couldn’t say no to her. He wasn’t heartless.

He couldn’t say he wasn’t regretting it, but he also couldn’t say he wasn’t mildly enjoying himself. The Slytherins were odd but interesting company; Parkinson had been dominating the narrative all night, asking question after question about Neville’s education and Luna’s apprenticeship. She’d asked Harry a few questions as well, but he could tell she wasn’t exactly jumping out of her seat to talk to him. Neither were Nott, or Goyle, or Malfoy; Goyle had barely said a word since he walked in, only nodding along to the conversation and letting out slight grunts every once in a while. Nott chimed in a polite amount, each word clearly calculated to sound agreeable but not enthusiastic, like he was afraid of showing too much emotion. Malfoy, on the other hand—Harry didn’t really know what was up with Malfoy. He talked quite a bit, but only as a sidebar to Parkinson’s questions. He never prompted anything or brought up any new topics.

He also didn’t look Harry in the eye once, even though Harry could feel his gaze almost the entire evening like a white-hot laser on his skin, silently searing into him. 

It was bizarre. 

Harry hated it, but not enough to make him throw his wine glass or flip the coffee table on its side. He was having a hard enough time deciding whether or not he should be annoyed at these people for intruding on his life. 

Except—well. It didn’t feel like an intrusion anymore. Not with them sitting in his living room, eating his food, making conversation. It felt like a misstep. Like maybe the universe wasn’t actually playing some cruel prank on Harry, and this reunion hadn’t been predetermined whatsoever. Like it was an accident—a stumble of fate.

That revelation made it all easier, somehow. 

“You’ve lived here for two years, correct?” Parkinson asked him at one point, sounding just shy of genuine. There was something about her thick eyeliner and catlike expression that made him skeptical of her tone, even though part of him desperately wanted to believe she was being authentic.

“I have, yeah,” he answered anyway, trying to be a good sport. _For Luna’s sake,_ his brain reminded him.

“And you sell your apples at a market? A grocery store?”

“I usually sell at the farmer’s market in town every weekend. We have a booth there.”

“We?” Parkinson tilted her head. “You have employees?”

“Just me and Neville,” Luna piped up, her head in Harry’s lap and feet propped up on the hearth. “He doesn’t pay us, though.”

Harry peered down at her, arching his brow. “Do you _want_ me to pay you?”

Luna just giggled, and from there, the night pressed onward with a little less tension and a little more ease. Harry realised later on that the self-refilling bottle of daisy wine was also to blame for the significant shift in mood; nearly everyone was tipsy, except for maybe Goyle—Harry couldn’t tell what was going on with him, but he wasn’t causing any fights, and that was good enough.

As the evening fermented and soberness slowly began leaking out of the room, Phoebe lumbered down from upstairs and collapsed at the foot of Harry’s favorite armchair, her chin resting on Malfoy’s feet. Malfoy barely spared her a glance, reaching down to scratch her head almost automatically as if he’d been doing it every day of his life. The sight of that was what prompted Harry to disrupt the ebbing conversation and ask quite carelessly, “What the hell are you all doing here, anyway?”

That caused a standstill. Heads swiveled to look at Harry through the haze, Parkinson’s eyes like bullets and Malfoy’s like glass beads, glossy and wide.

“Excuse me?” Nott asked, sounding stuffy.

Harry paused, then repeated, “What are you doing here?” He looked around, meeting all of their gazes. “In Bedford, I mean. All the way out here in the middle of nowhere.”

There was a short exchange of shifty, startled looks between the Slytherins, none of them seeming willing to answer. After a moment, Parkinson looked ready to gear up and take one for the team, but then Malfoy’s crystal-cut accent broke the silence.

“We’re on the run from the Ministry,” he said, staring fixedly at Harry with the same steeliness he’d had the other day. Everyone in the room seemed to shrink with those words, leaving only Harry and Malfoy to mow each other down with iron-forged gazes. 

“On the run,” Harry echoed, the sentence grating his tongue.

“Yes,” Malfoy answered, unmoved. “We haven’t done anything illegal, so don’t get your pants in a twist, but we don’t want them to be aware of our whereabouts. We’ve been moving through different parts of the country for a while now, and Bedfordshire happened to be our next stop. That’s why we’re here.”

Luna sat up from Harry’s lap, fair brows drawn together. “Why don’t you want them to know where you are?”

“None of your business,” Parkinson snapped suddenly, a look of instant regret passing over her face less than a second later. “Shit, I—sorry. It’s—Draco’s right, we haven’t done anything illegal. That’s all you need to know.”

“But _why_?” Neville asked, astonished.

“It’s not important,” Malfoy answered firmly.

“Clearly it is, if you’ve been playing musical chairs all over the country,” Harry disagreed. “Is that why you aren’t doing magic?”

Malfoy wet his lips, then looked away. “Yes.”

“But—I thought your magic was _taken_ from you during your sentence.”

“It was,” Nott jumped in. “I mean—mine, Draco’s, and Goyle’s. Only for a year though, while we served out our parole. Technically we’re allowed to do magic now, we just choose not to, so the Ministry doesn’t have the means to catch up with us.”

“You’re making it very hard for us to believe you haven’t done anything illegal,” Neville said lightly. 

“I assure you we haven’t,” Parkinson said tersely, back as straight as the chair she was perched in. 

“It’s a matter of dignity, not of the law,” Malfoy added, but Harry agreed with Neville. They weren’t making it easy. 

“What sort of dignity?” he prodded, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Malfoy looked at him sourly, shifting in his seat, and Harry felt a strange tingle of triumph in knowing that he was uncomfortable sitting in Harry’s favorite chair. 

“None of your business,” Malfoy stated, attempting to emulate Parkinson’s cold tone but falling short. 

“Is nothing our business?” Harry asked him tiredly.

“Correct.”

Luna sighed, then poked at Harry to move his elbows aside so she could recline back into his lap. “You’re all so intent on being mysterious. Why is that?”

There was a pause, then, possibly for the first time all evening, Goyle spoke up, “Because we’re Slytherins.”

“Not anymore,” Luna pointed out, folding her hands over her stomach. There was a straw-colored strand of hair cutting across her cheek, so Harry brushed it out of the way carefully, and she flashed a brief smile in his direction. 

“Clearly you’re unaware of our house motto,” Malfoy sniffed. “ _Semel in Slytherin, semper Slytherin._ Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin.”

“Your house had a _motto_?” Neville rolled his head back disbelievingly, wine glass dangling loosely from his fingers. “Merlin, save us all.”

“No, we didn’t have a motto,” Nott assured, stretching his leg out and kicking Malfoy in the shin with light reprimand. “He’s making that up. And rest assured, if we did have a motto, it would be far better than _semel in Slytherin, semper Slytherin._ Could you not think of anything better, Draco?”

“I have three glasses of wine in me, Theo, you cannot hold me accountable for speaking like a plebeian.”

“I absolutely can, and I absolutely will.”

“I believe my house had a motto,” Luna spoke up thoughtfully. “I remember it was in French, but I don’t speak French. Do you speak French, Draco?”

Malfoy blinked, seeming startled by the sound of his first name. “I do, on occasion. Why?”

“Just curious. Your mother speaks French, too, doesn’t she?”

A short, silent beat passed, like everyone in the room but Luna had inhaled sharply at the mention of Narcissa Malfoy. “She… does,” Malfoy answered slowly, fingers curling over his armrests as if he was bracing himself for something. 

“I thought so,” Luna hummed. “I believe a distant aunt of yours taught my mother how to speak French, too. She was quite good at it, I remember.”

Another beat passed, this one much longer and much, much heavier. Harry didn’t know how they’d switched gears so fast, but that happened with Luna. You always started somewhere with her and then ended up on an entirely different planet. 

Harry didn’t know a lot about Pandora—Luna didn’t mention her often, only when she was a bit tipsy, or having a bad nightmare. She used to have them more often, back when she didn’t have an apprenticeship and hung around Harry’s house for days on end—but she hadn’t had one around him in months. Harry used to sit up with her at the foot of the guest bed and stroke her spine gently until the bad images stopped flashing on the back of her eyelids and she could fall back asleep. She’d do the same for him whenever he had twisted, grotesque visions of the Forbidden Forest late at night, or when he woke up in a cold sweat, a raging Fiendfyre dying around him as his eyes slid open. Those were the nights they’d grown close, like twin flames drawn to each other for support. 

“I remember meeting your mother,” Malfoy said suddenly, softly, and Luna’s eyes flickered open, round and blue in the soft firelight. 

“You do?” she asked, matching his softness.

Malfoy nodded, casting his gaze towards the fire. Something made Harry want to get up and grab the curve of his chin to tug him back in place so he could meet Luna’s eyes. “I do,” Malfoy said. “I was very young, so it’s all a bit fuzzy, but I remember her. I was introduced to her at some event that I probably didn’t care much about, but I remember liking her robes the best out of everyone there.”

“Her robes,” Luna repeated, small and hopeful, as if she was afraid the words would run away from her if she didn’t catch them. 

“Yes. I remember them being silk, with little animals embroidered all over the cape. They were tigers, I think? Or maybe leopards.”

“Leopards,” Luna said, face breaking into a slow sunrise of a smile. “They would’ve been leopards. Her favorite animal.”

“Ah,” Malfoy said, mouth wavering, like he was debating whether or not he should smile. “Well, they were quite lovely. At least, my five-year-old mind thought so.”

“Your five-year-old mind has great taste,” Luna said, and then Malfoy couldn’t seem to hold back a smile any longer. It was tentative and small, but nothing like the smiles Harry was used to seeing on him. It softened his features, almost, making him blend in with the gold satin of the evening rather than stand out against it like some sort of dark stain. 

“Thanks, ever so.”

“You’re welcome.” Luna laid her head back down, eyes shuttering closed as Harry returned to softly stroking her silken hair. “She was a Slytherin, you know. My mother.”

Silence weighted the room. Harry’s hand stilled, and he looked up to find Malfoy already staring at him, eyes wide, fingers digging into the velvet armrests. 

“Yes,” Malfoy said quietly, not breaking eye contact. “I know.”

*

The Slytherins came over for dinner again the next week, partially because Harry was a spineless bastard, but mostly because Luna had mastered the art of making him feel guilty for saying no to her, and she was a force to reckon with. They also came over the week after that, and then the one after that, and then the one after that, until unofficially they were coming over every weekend and Harry had absolutely no say in the matter because Luna’s word was gospel in the Potter household, apparently.

“I feel like I should start charging you rent,” he told her one hazy evening after the Slytherins had said their goodbyes and stumbled out the front door, Malfoy’s arm around Parkinson’s shoulder, Theodore Nott humming “Pinball Wizard” off-key under his breath. 

Luna just flashed her teeth at him and sighed, “Oh, Harry,” in that way she did, and the next thing he knew, he was making scrambled eggs for her the following morning while _Countdown_ played loudly in the living room.

The most annoying part about the whole dinner-with-Slytherins debacle was that he was, for the most part, enjoying himself—like, actually, genuinely enjoying himself. He even caught himself looking forward to them at the end of the week at times, which was an epiphany that made him want to tear his hair out.

And he wasn’t the only one who felt that way, either—Malfoy seemed just as frustrated and confused with the civil Friday evenings spent in front of Harry’s fire as Harry was. He even went as far as to corner Harry in the kitchen one night, swaying a bit and blinking under the feeble overhead lighting, clearly tipsy. “Listen,” he said, putting two hands on the wooden countertop. “Can we talk?”

Harry was at the sink, rinsing the dishes from dinner so he wouldn’t have to the following morning. A plate clattered as he dropped it into the metal basin, and he tried focusing on that instead of the waver in Malfoy’s voice. “About what?”

“Us,” Malfoy said, then scrunched his nose at his own words and backtracked. “No, not us. _This._ This thing. Whatever’s going on here.”

“What’s going on here?” Harry asked innocently, flicking off the faucet.

“I don’t _know._ That’s the problem.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes you do, Potter! This—this weird thing you’re doing. One day I think you hate me— _us_ —and then the next day you’re inviting us over for dinner every week. I don’t get it, and I’d like you to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.”

“Yes, there is!” Malfoy leaned over the counter, hair falling in front of his eyes melodramatically. “Why have you been inviting us over? I’ve been trying to figure it out for myself _all fucking month_ and I have come up with nothing. That never happens.”

Harry wiped his hands on the patterned dish towel hanging from the hook next to the sink. “It was Luna’s idea.”

“See, _that_ I figured out. I’m not that imbecilic. But why did she invite us in the first place? And why did you go along with it?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, finally turning around to meet Malfoy head-on, still wringing the dishtowel in his hands so he wouldn’t reach across the counter and strangle the man. “I don’t fucking know. But rest assured, I’m certainly regretting it now.”

“No, you’re not,” Malfoy sneered.

“No, I’m not. Why the fuck does it matter?”

“It just does!”

But it didn’t, and Harry knew that, and Malfoy knew that, so they let the subject drop and the Slytherins came over for dinner again the following week. (Because Harry was a spineless bastard.)

What was truly strange was that—despite their new unofficial arrangement—Phoebe didn’t stop disappearing in the mornings. Her behavior was as consistent as the sun rising, and eventually, Harry just had to accept it for what it was—he didn’t have the time nor the temperament to trudge across the property line every morning in search of her. So he let her go. He didn’t understand _why_ she was going, but he let her go anyway. It’s not like the Slytherins were harming her in any way, and no matter the conditions she always came back.

That didn’t mean Harry liked it. He hated it, really, but he was trying to come to terms with the fact that this was out of his control. That the Slytherins were part of his life now. 

“Maybe she’s going through puberty,” Luna suggested one afternoon, perched on the porch railing. “That’s a thing for dogs, isn’t it?”

“Definitely not,” Neville replied, shaking his head. “Even if it was, why would that explain anything?”

“I mean, children withdraw from their parents when they go through puberty, and she’s kind of like Harry’s child. You know?”

“This is more than withdrawal,” Harry said, frowning at his dog as he stroked the curve of her back. “It’s almost like she’s magnetically attracted to Malfoy, which is creepy as fuck when you think about it.”

“If that’s the case, let’s hope it’s one-sided,” Neville snorted.

Harry scrunched his nose, disgusted. “Did you really just make a joke about bestiality?”

“You started it!”

“And now I’m stopping it. Never bring up Malfoy and bestiality in the same breath ever again.”

They both agreed that would be easy, and time went on. October slid quickly into November, and soon the days began to shrink in daylight and Harry began to spend more and more time in the depths of his orchard, pruning and picking for hours each day in preparation for the rapidly oncoming winter. Neville’s visits got more sporadic as his classes picked up speed, while Luna’s got more frequent. She began staying entire weekends, falling asleep on Harry’s couch late in the evening after Friday dinners and, frankly, forgetting to go home. Not that Harry minded.

In late November, she helped him string up Christmas lights around his windows and along the railing of his front and back porch, making his house look magical in the ripe blue of dusk. Malfoy scoffed when he first saw them, muttering something snarky about “decorations in November” under his breath, but Harry just ignored him. It was getting both easier and harder to do that, now; easier in that Harry was getting used to his snarkiness, harder in that Harry was starting to involuntarily notice other things about him. Like, for example, the way his voice got smoother when he’d had two or more glasses of wine, or the way his thumb and his pinky finger stuck out when he put his hands in his trouser pockets, or the way his neck curved to meet the angled knot of his jaw. Harry also started paying more attention to the way his clothes were positioned on his body, how his white shirts were never wrinkled and his jumpers hung off his shoulders a bit, making him look all soft and round and strange. 

It’s not that he was trying to notice those things—it just sort of happened. And then it kept happening, so much to the point where Harry just had to ask.

“Do you think Malfoy’s attractive?”

Luna, who was reclined against Harry’s headboard with her legs crossed, peered over the edge of her magazine and met Harry’s gaze in his wardrobe mirror. “Is this a serious question, or am I missing something?”

“Serious question.” Harry squinted at his reflection, then swiped a hand through his fringe to push it out of his eyes. He paused, then backtracked. “I mean—not attractive as in you’re attracted _to_ him, just like, attractive in general. Objectively.”

Luna considered for a moment, setting her magazine face down on her lap, then said firmly, “Yes.”

Harry blinked. “Really?”

“Yes. Is that surprising?”

“I don’t know. I guess not.”

“Do you find him attractive?”

“No,” Harry said automatically, turning away from the mirror. “No, of course not. He’s a dick and a half.”

Luna shrugged. “Dicks can be attractive.”

“Oh my god. You did not just say that.”

“What? It’s true.”

“Luna—you’re a lesbian.”

“I’m not talking about genitalia, Harry,” she said gently, like she was speaking to a very young child. “And, to be fair, he’s been a lot less dickish lately. Don’t you think?”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. He supposed Malfoy hadn’t been too horrible as of late, but he couldn’t be sure—spending so much time with the git could’ve warped Harry’s brain and made him think that Malfoy was being normal when he was actually just being a dick. Harry couldn’t trust his own judgment anymore. “I don’t know,” he settled with, slumping down on the end of his bed and nearly startling his half-asleep dog. “I don’t know why I’m asking, really.”

“It’s perfectly alright to find him attractive. You’re allowed to be attracted to people.”

“Not to Malfoy,” Harry groused, then shook his head. “Not—that I am. Of course.”

“Of course,” Luna echoed, soft and bemused. “I’m just saying—hypothetically, if you were attracted to him—it would be fine. Normal, even.”

“Okay,” Harry breathed, picking absently at one of the little knotted flowers on his duvet cover. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

* * *

They were in the middle of playing a fast, brightly-colored game that Potter had declared earlier was called “Uno”—which, in Draco’s opinion, was the oddest name for a card game invented by an American company—when something thumped loudly against the rain-streaked window of the living room. It spooked Draco so suddenly that he nearly dropped his hand of cards into his plate of buttered penne, but Potter seemed unfazed as he hopped up from the floor and stepped right over Draco’s legs to go check out the noise.

“Owl?” inquired Lovegood after setting a blue card on the top of the towering pile in the center of the coffee table.

“Yep,” Potter confirmed, unlatching the window and budging it up to let a small, tawny-colored bird flurry inside. “Hermione’s.”

“Oh!” Lovegood exclaimed happily. “How lovely. I haven’t seen her or Ron in ages. What’s the letter say?”

Draco’s heart rate spiked and he exchanged a sharp glance with Pansy. He’d been wondering where Weasley and Granger had been all this time, but he’d been far too wary to ask after them. 

Potter tussled with the owl for a moment, nudging its spindly leg up so he could untie the thin parcel twined to its foot. He stroked its head to calm it back down while he tore the envelope open with his teeth, a movement that Draco absolutely did not stare at, thank you very much.

“They’re inviting us out for drinks next weekend,” Potter relayed after pulling out a neatly-handwritten note and scanning it over quickly, fingers still stroking the owl rhythmically. Draco definitely wasn’t staring at that, either. “Friday, at a Muggle place near the university. We’ve been there before.”

“In Luton?” Lovegood asked brightly.

“Yeah, I think.”

“And they invited all of us?” Longbottom questioned, tearing his eyes away from his hand of cards.

Potter blinked, then cast a look around the room, meeting Draco’s gaze for a fleeting moment. “Er. I mean, she didn’t really specify, but she knows that I’ve been having people over. So—”

“So, it’s settled,” Pansy jumped in suddenly, slapping one of her cards on top of Lovegood’s triumphantly. “We’re all coming.”

Potter’s eyes blew wide, as did Draco’s. “We are?” Draco found himself asking, voice pitching much higher than necessary.

“I mean, only if Harry’s okay with it.” Pansy looked at Potter directly. “Are you okay with it? We haven’t been out for drinks in months. Not since we moved here, I think.”

Potter—frozen, like a deer caught in headlights—swallowed visibly and issued a small, unsure, “I guess? But—”

“Brilliant. Thanks ever so for the invitation.” A Cheshire-esque grin quickly overtook her face. Then, completely changing the subject, she turned back to the game and said forcefully, “Draco, hurry up, it’s your turn.”

Draco looked down at his cards, but couldn’t quite process what was on them given that Potter’s eyes were now pinned to him, burning invisible holes into the fabric of his jumper. “Um,” he said, blinking hard. “Pass?”

“Lame,” Theo grumbled from his place on the couch, then immediately lit up when he realised it was his turn. He slapped one of his last remaining cards down—a wild card, at that. “Aha! Uno, fuckers!”

There was a collective groan, followed by a deep sigh from Potter as he folded Granger’s letter in his hands and stuffed it into his back pocket. Something strange and hot writhed in Draco's chest—something that made him want to get up and apologise to Potter—but he didn’t know what for. 

_For everything,_ a voice chirped in the back of his brain. 

For everything.

*

“Have I told you recently how much I hate you?”

“Multiple times.” Pansy spun away from the mirror, feathery earrings swinging wildly around her cheeks. “How do you like this one?” She brandished her arms down her dress, black and thin with a silvery belt cinching the waist and long, belled sleeves. 

“It looks cold,” Draco said drily, eyeing her up and down. It looked grand, actually, and if Draco was attracted to women, he figured he’d be drooling over her—but he was mad at Pansy, and he wasn’t exactly jumping to dish out compliments to her at the moment. “Why must you always dress like it’s summer in Morocco? It’s nearly December, you absolute nutter.”

“Warm-blooded,” she reminded him, spinning back towards the mirror and adjusting her neckline. “Do you think I could get Potter to cast a Warming Charm on me? I bet his Warming Charms are phenomenal.”

“Oh my god,” Draco groaned, falling backwards onto Pansy’s bed. “I hate you so bloody much. I can’t believe you roped us into this.”

“You should really be thanking me,” Pansy sing-songed, unfazed by Draco’s harshness. “You’re going to get to see him drunk, after all. Isn’t that, like, your number one fantasy? Getting him drunk?”

“It most certainly is not. Why would you even begin to think that?”

“I don’t know, I’m just saying—”

“Stop! Stop _just saying_.” Draco propped himself up on his elbows, glaring pointedly at Pansy. “We’re about to spend an entire evening at a nightclub with Potter’s friends, all because of you. It would’ve been so easy to not say anything, but you just _had_ to. And for what? What could you possibly think is going to come out of tonight?”

“Luna will be there, too,” she pointed out.

“So?!”

“So, it’s going to be fine. Luna won’t let anything bad happen on her watch, I know it.” She paused, then spun in front of the mirror and frowned at herself. “Should I wear tights under this?”

Draco stared at her hard, then sighed and re-collapsed onto the bed. “Yes, probably.”

“I thought so.”

* * *

They decided to meet at the bottom of the hill where the river split, the exact median between Harry’s place and Malfoy’s. Except only three of the four Slytherins showed up, Goyle supposedly having opted out because of his fear of crowded places. With the additional absence of Neville (due to a teetering mountain of coursework, he’d informed Harry regretfully), the group felt significantly smaller and much more intimate than usual.

“Harry Potter,” was the first thing Malfoy said when the Slytherins reached the bottom, his voice dripping with horror. “Please, for the love of Salazar, tell me you’re not wearing dungarees to a bar.”

Harry looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with my dungarees?”

“There are about a million things wrong with your dungarees, none of which I have the time or patience to relay to you. Do you really not have anything else? Anything at all?”

Harry folded his arms. “I’m not changing.”

“Pansy.” Malfoy turned to Parkinson, who was wearing a tight, shimmery black dress that looked far too thin for her to be wearing without a Warming Charm. “Tell him how ugly his dungarees are.”

“Your dungarees are quite ugly,” she informed Harry apologetically. “Perhaps if you put a jumper over them?”

“I’m already wearing a jumper under them!” Harry protested, holding his thermal-clad arms out. “And these are my _good_ dungarees, thank you very much.”

“They’re corduroy,” Malfoy said horrendously.

“What’s wrong with corduroy?!”

“ _Everything’s wrong with corduroy._ ” 

“That’s so fucking offensive,” Harry said seriously. “Half my wardrobe is made of corduroy, you prick.”

“That’s my point!” Malfoy argued. “I’m not going out with you dressed like that. I understand you’re a farmer and everything, but need you let everyone on Earth know that?”

“I’m not changing.”

“I—fine.” Malfoy then did the unthinkable, tugging off his thick, sage-green jumper and shoving it at Harry. “Put that on. I’m not leaving until you do.”

“What—?”

“Put it on, Potter.”

“You’re being weird,” Harry told him. “Like, extremely weird.”

“I realise that, and I’ve decided that I do not care because I absolutely refuse to be seen in public with you dressed like that. Put it on.”

That was the last thing on Earth Harry wanted to do, but the material was warm and pliant under his hands, and they really did need to get going if they were going to make it to the bar on time. So he bit the bullet and put it on, sliding his arms through the impossibly soft sleeves and tugging it over his head, most likely messing up his hair more than usual. “There,” he declared once it was on all the way, cuffs falling past his fingertips. “Happy now?”

“Not even a little bit, but your dungarees look much less horrendous,” Malfoy answered, folding his own arms against the cold. He was only wearing a thin collared shirt now, unbuttoned at the neck and slightly wrinkled around the shoulders.

“That color does look nice on you,” Luna pointed out blithely from behind Harry. “But we really should get going, now. Ron and Hermione have most likely arrived already.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed emphatically, thankful for the switch of subject. “Yes, we should go. Who’s taking who?”

Luna surveyed the Slytherins for a moment, then decided, “I’ll take Pansy and Theodore, you take Draco. Will that work?”

“Yeah, fine.” Harry held out his elbow, beckoning Malfoy forward. “How long has it been since you all Apparated?”

“Four years,” Pansy answered for him, tentatively wrapping one manicured hand around Luna’s outstretched forearm. “Give or take.”

“Shit.” Harry blinked as Malfoy took his elbow.“Are you going to be okay? Please try not to throw up on me.”

Malfoy shrugged carelessly. “No promises.”

“Jesus.” Harry rolled his eyes towards the unusually cloudless night, open and peppered with little silver pinpricks of stars. When he dropped his chin back down he asked, “Luna, you know where we’re going?”

“I do. The Silk Dragon, right?”

“That’s the one.” Harry then leveled a wary look at Malfoy. “Brace yourself.”

*

If there was a spectrum between what was considered a pub and what was considered a nightclub, The Silk Dragon would’ve fallen somewhere in the obscure middle. Reddish-purple light spilled through its open door onto the damp pavement, casting a sinister hue over the alley that the five of them had just stumbled into. The streets beyond were alive with music and nightlife, cigarette smoke thick and pallid in the air.

Harry wasn’t sure why Ron and Hermione had chosen this place in particular to meet up, given there was a perfectly pleasant pub just around the corner that served vegan snack mixes and played Bowie over the loudspeakers, but he wasn’t going to question it. It was entirely possible that they didn’t get out enough in London, what with their highly demanding work schedules, so Harry was perfectly happy to give them an exciting night out if that’s what they wanted. 

There was a single bouncer outside that asked for their IDs, which—surprisingly enough—the Slytherins had ready, and not a single one was fake. “Done this before, have you?” Harry asked Malfoy when they made it inside, having to sway close to him because of the garishly loud music. 

“A few times,” Malfoy answered, ducking his head and blinking against the thin purple haze of the bar. “We spent some time in Dublin a year or two ago and went out nearly every night. Irish nightlife is surprisingly exuberant.”

“Huh,” Harry said. “Never been to Ireland.”

“You should go, sometime. Lots of farms there—I’m sure you’d fit right in.”

“Maybe.” Harry looked around the joint, squinting into the darkened corners where leather-upholstered booths were shoved together, keeping an eye out for bright red or bushy brown hair. “Are they here yet?”

“They’re here,” Luna answered loudly, pointing over Harry’s shoulder down the skinny marble-topped bar. “Over there, at the end.”

Sure enough, Ron and Hermione were sitting together on high bar stools at the very end of the bar, heads bent close and tinted red under the ambient lighting. Ron was the first one to lift his head and spot them, and a wide, goofy smile broke out on his face as he lifted his arm to wave them over. “Harry!”

“Mate.” Harry felt himself grin like a madman, meeting Ron in the middle of the vibrating room and throwing an arm around him despite the fact that he was at least a foot taller. “Have you gotten bigger since I last saw you?”

“Fuck you, no I haven’t,” Ron laughed, slapping Harry on the back jovially. There was a faint sort of scent wafting off him, smelling like home, or maybe fresh-baked sourdough and warm linen and smoke, but Harry figured that last one was more from the bar than it was from him. 

“He has, actually. His ego, particularly,” Hermione piped up, sliding off her own stool to come break through Ron’s embrace and wrap her own arms around Harry’s shoulders, smiling. “Hi, Harry. It’s been far too long.”

“Agreed,” Harry said emphatically, digging his nose into her neck and squeezing her so tight she squealed a little. When she pulled back, her grin spread even wider. 

“I see you’ve brought your whole motley crew,” she observed. “Luna, it’s lovely to see you.”

“And you, Hermione,” Luna replied, smiling angelically while the neon-tinted lights played over her face. “How’s everything with you? How’s the Ministry?”

“ _Lord,_ don’t make me talk about the Ministry. In fact, let’s not talk about it at all tonight,” Hermione said feelingly. “I’m declaring tonight a no-Ministry night. Just forget it exists, please, for the sake of my emotional wellbeing.”

“Won’t be hard for us,” chimed a new voice, and both Ron and Hermione swiveled their heads towards the rest of the group, faces freezing almost comically when they realised that it was Pansy Parkinson who’d just spoken and not some stranger who happened to be listening in on their conversation.

“You—oh,” Hermione said, blinking, like she wasn’t sure if she was seeing things correctly. 

“Oh,” Ron echoed, jaw unhinging.

“Right,” Harry jumped in suddenly, realising that this was going to be disastrous if he didn’t say anything. Drawing himself up, he stepped away so his back wasn’t facing the Slytherins and started again. “Right, um, sorry, I hope neither of you mind, but I sort of invited them along because your owl came when we were having dinner, so it seemed kind of rude not to—”

“He’s being nice,” Parkinson cut him off suddenly, putting a hand up to stop him. “We invited ourselves because we haven’t gone to a pub in about half a year and he was too nice to tell us no.” She stuck her hand out amicably. “Nice to see you two again. Been almost five years, hasn’t it?”

“Almost,” Hermione said faintly, reaching out to shake Pansy’s hand limply. Ron looked like he was on the verge of passing out next to her. Harry watched them carefully, terrified of the very real fact that this interaction could either make or break the whole night. Malfoy and Nott were both standing very still behind Parkinson, their faces bleached white amid the shifting electric light. 

“I love your hair,” Parkinson said after a still beat, smiling as she did so. “How do you get it to braid that way?”

Hermione touched the crown of her head absently. “I—um, use Charms.”

“You’re going to have to tell me all about them.” Parkinson dropped Hermione’s hand, then looked around at the group questioningly. “Now, are we going to get a table, or what?”

* * *

Draco didn’t know how he’d ended up in the very corner of their booth, squished between Pansy and a slightly tacky strip of wall that kept sticking uncomfortably to his shirt sleeve, but somehow he was there. And Hermione Granger was sitting directly across from him, hands folded around a neat cocktail while she listened in on the general conversation and pointedly didn’t make eye contact with him.

So, in short, things were going great. 

“Let me get this straight,” Weasley was saying next to her, large elbows propped up on the table and shoulders hunched as he stared disbelievingly at Potter. “You all met each other because of your _dog_?”

“More or less, yeah.” A plastic straw stuck out of the side of Potter’s mouth as he spoke, half slurping at something bright pink that looked more like an energy drink than it did alcohol. 

“That’s so fucking weird,” Weasley laughed; Draco had forgotten how loud his voice was. “Have you taken her to the vet recently? Maybe she’s gone loopy or something.”

Smiling around his straw, Potter flicked a wadded-up napkin at Weasley’s forehead. “Call my dog loopy again, you wanker.”

“I’m just saying! Maybe there’s an underlying condition you don’t know about. ‘S hard to tell with animals, you know.”

“How the fuck would you know? Molly’s never let you have a house plant, let alone a dog. She told me you tried watering a cactus one time and nearly killed it.”

“Fair point, but we did foster a litter of crups one time when I was younger.” Weasley flicked the balled-up napkin back in Potter’s direction. “Clingy little buggers. They all liked Charlie the best.”

“Of course they did. Everyone likes Charlie the best.”

“Wait.” Granger slid in suddenly, putting her hand down on the varnished table and interrupting them. “Hang on. Tell me again what happened. Phoebe started wandering off every morning right when they moved in?” At the word “they,” she waved a limp hand at Draco and Pansy, still refusing to look at them head-on. 

“Pretty much,” Potter nodded, looking towards Lovegood for confirmation. 

“Yes,” Lovegood corroborated easily, and Draco noticed that she had the same bright pink drink as Potter, but instead of one paper umbrella, she had three. Another was tucked behind her ear. “It was very strange. She always came back, of course, right around noon. But none of us ever saw her leave in the morning.”

“Is it still happening?” Granger asked, brows knitting together. 

“Every day,” Potter said. His gaze flicked to Draco for a brief moment—so brief Draco might’ve imagined it.

Encouraged by that glance, Draco lifted his chin and spoke up, “We’ve got nothing to do with it.” Heads turned in his direction, and he tried not to squirm. “I mean, we haven’t been leaving food out or anything like that. She just keeps showing up out of the blue.”

Granger, considering him carefully for the first time all evening, frowned. “And she’s been there since day one?”

Draco nodded. 

“Hm,” she grunted, leaning back and stirring her drink with her tiny plastic straw. “I might have a theory, but I can’t be sure without knowing more. It’s not likely.”

“What—” Potter began to ask, but was cut off by the noisy arrival of Theo holding a clinking platter of more drinks, as if they needed more to begin with. 

“This round’s on me,” he announced loudly, chest puffed out, and there was a small chorus of ‘thank you’s as he resituated himself in the booth next to Pansy, squishing Draco even more against the wall. In compensation, Theo slid him a tall glass of... something. “They told me it was the house favorite. Not exactly sure what it is, but the cherries reminded me of you.”

“Did they?” Draco raised his brow, eyeing the bright blood-red drink skeptically. “I despise cherries.”

“I know, that’s why they reminded me of you.”

“You’re horrible,” Draco informed him. “A horrible, horrible friend. I didn’t even know cherry cocktails existed.”

Theo shrugged. “They do. Now drink up or you owe me six quid.”

Frowning, Draco took one sip, decided he hated it, then took another. 

“I like cherries,” announced Potter suddenly, shifting in his seat so he could reach across the table and pluck one off the rim of Draco’s glass. 

“Hey!” Draco protested, then stopped himself when he realised he had absolutely no qualms about his cherries being stolen. Taking his pause as an evident go-ahead, Potter grinned and popped the chemically-enhanced fruit into his mouth, teeth flashing white in the shifting low lighting. Draco snorted at him. “Those are artificial, you know.”

“So?” Potter challenged, sucking on the bright stem then discarding it into his napkin.

“So, isn’t your whole thing, like, pro-organic?”

“Is it?” Potter asked, grinning wider when Draco scowled at him.

“You know what I mean. And stop answering everything I say with a question.”

“Why should I?”

“Oh my god.” Draco thunked his head on the table, then lifted it to look pleadingly at Granger. “Can you make him stop? I feel like you’re the only one who can make him stop.”

Granger’s eyebrows arched, but there was something light in her expression that made a flare of hope spark and sizzle in Draco’s stomach. Something that might be mirth. “I don’t know, I’m rather enjoying this.” She turned to Potter. “Are you enjoying this?”

Potter’s eyes were villainously bright. “Am I?”

Draco thunked his head again, deciding resolutely that this was going to be the longest night of his life.

*

Except, actually, it wasn’t. Two more cocktails and one round of shots into the evening and Draco had completely lost his conception of time. That was fine, though, because he was much more focused on the way Potter kept stealing cherries off his drinks and popping them carelessly into his mouth, leaving behind faint red stains on his fingertips and on his bottom lip. It was torture, really. Capital punishment. Potter should have been arrested right then and there. But it wasn’t nearly torturous enough for Draco to stop ordering cherry cocktails.

But, of course, with more alcohol came less sobriety, and after an hour or so, the bar itself became much livelier, enhanced and saturated by the warm liquid running like sweet electricity through Draco’s veins. At one point, a whole obnoxious group of barely-adults had spilled into the venue and cranked up the music, and now there was some sort of dance floor situation happening that he’d somehow been swept into, even though he wasn’t a dancer in any shape or form. Luna was out here with him, as well as Pansy, but she’d been sucked into the crowd a while ago and Draco hadn’t seen her since. Dancing with Luna was fun, though—she clearly didn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone thought of her, so she danced like someone free. Someone in her element. Draco was certainly far, _far_ out of his element—his element was something more along the lines of a quiet night at home, fire crackling and wireless turned up—and yet he was having fun. Real fun.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) no one from the dynamite trio of Gryffindors danced with them. They all stayed rooted to the booth, laughing and chattering loudly over the pulsating music and bending their heads together. When Draco looked at them, he hated them a bit, but only because their magnetic closeness reminded him of school. Not because they’d done anything wrong. It was hard looking at them, though. It only reminded him of how horrible he used to be—how he used to hate the three of them with every burning fibre of his being. And not just pretend hatred; real, actual, blood-boiling hatred that made him sick to his stomach to think about. 

He didn’t hate them anymore, of course. He just didn’t quite know what to do with them.

“Hey,” came a smooth voice from over Draco’s shoulder, breaking him from his daze. All at once, the noise of the vibrating music and pitched laughter came flooding back, like a bubble had just been popped around his ears. He turned, swaying slightly, and found Theo standing directly in front of him, a thin sheen of sweat glazing his forehead. 

“Hey,” Draco said, his surprise showing. “Have you been dancing, too?”

Theo grinned in the way he did whenever he was well on the right side of tipsy, all crooked and thin-lipped. “Maybe a bit. How could you tell?”

Draco returned the grin, lifting his arm to poke Theo lightly in the forehead, right between his eyebrows. “You’re sweating like a broken faucet.”

“Fuck, I am?” Theo copied Draco, touching his own forehead absently. “That ruins things. Here I was thinking I could swagger over to you all smooth and good-looking to seduce you with my rugged charm, but I suppose not. Shit.”

Draco froze, which was a near-impossible thing to do in the middle of a crowd of writhing bodies. “Wait, what?”

Someone bumped into Theo, forcing him forward into Draco’s space and making their feet knock together. They were almost exactly the same height. “You heard me,” Theo said, pitching forward to speak directly into Draco’s ear. His breath was hot and damp and all too familiar. “You look good tonight. Like, unfairly good. I was hoping I could coax you into a round or so with me, for old times’ sake.”

“Old times’ sake,” Draco echoed, his brain going fuzzy for a moment, and then going sharp again when he realised what exactly he was being asked. “You mean—here? Now?”

Theo was shamelessly close now, but this time it was obviously on purpose. His hand fell to the jut of Draco’s hip. “Here, bathroom, outside. I don’t care.” His head tilted, mouth suddenly brushing the shell of Draco’s ear. “Whatever you want. Only if you want.”

“You—” Draco’s heart jumped, something hot zinging up his spine. He could see the booth from where they were standing—more specifically, he could see Potter. But Potter wasn’t looking at him. Not that Draco was expecting him to, or anything. But. But what? “Okay,” he decided abruptly, pulling back to look Theo in the eye. Draco’s whole body was warm, warm, warm.

Theo’s eyes brightened. “Okay?” he clarified, grip tightening on Draco’s hip.

“Okay,” Draco repeated. “Just this once. Outside. But make it quick.”

“Quick,” Theo agreed, gaze like fire. “I can do quick.”

“I know. I remember.”

Then Theo grinned wickedly and took Draco’s arm, his skin as hot as an open flame, and together they stumbled towards the door, swaying through the hazy throng of punch-drunk Muggles and leaving behind the rest of their crew. Pansy and Luna would be alright without him, Draco thought as the exit grew nearer, his heart rate climbing higher and higher. They’d be fine. Perfectly fine.

There was an alley right around the side of the bar—the same one that they’d Apparated into not two hours earlier—and there was also a long, open strip of wall that Draco found himself pressed against in the blink of an eye. And then there was cool brick against Draco’s lower back, then more heat, more hands, more lips, and he tried with all his might to get green eyes and cherry stains out of his vision as his head tipped back and his eyes slid closed, but still the name clinging to his tongue was one that certainly did not belong to Theo.

* * *

“No,” Hermione firmly decided a few hours into the night, splaying her hand over the top of Harry’s newly refreshed drink and pulling it deliberately out of his reach. “I’m cutting you off. If you drink any more, we won’t be able to Apparate.”

“Ugh,” Harry groaned, slumping down in his seat and letting his head loll back dramatically, hating that she was right. He wasn’t _that_ drunk, though—he wasn’t seeing double or anything, and he could probably still tell someone the name of the prime minister if they asked. Not that they would, because that would be an odd question to ask a drunk man. But it could happen.

“It’s for your own good,” Hermione assured, smiling apologetically as Harry rolled his head back into place and gave her a deflated look. “Are you sure you’re alright with us staying over tonight? If you don’t have room—”

Harry shook his head, holding up his hand to stop her. “I’ve got room. ‘S no bother, really. Are you staying, Lu?” He twisted to look over at Luna, who had just returned from dancing and was slurping zealously at a tall glass of what looked like either lemon water or vodka. Hopefully lemon water. 

“Will the couch be open?” she asked after swallowing, swaying slightly as she leaned back against her seat. 

“Probably.”

“Then yes.”

“What about your lot,” Ron spoke up then, jerking his head towards Parkinson, who was sitting at the end of the booth in a chair she’d pulled out of nowhere. “How are you getting home?”

Parkinson—who Harry couldn’t actually tell was drunk or not—simply quirked her eyebrow at him. “Concerned for my safety, Weasley?”

“It’s just a question,” Ron said stormily, and Harry patted his arm. 

“Ignore her. I’m getting them a cab.”

“Are you?” Parkinson inquired, leaning on her elbows. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“You are now,” Harry shrugged, and she rolled her eyes. “What? We can’t Side-Along you back, Ron’s the only sober one. He can’t take all of us.”

“Sober adjacent,” Ron corrected importantly. 

“Whatever,” Pansy sighed, brushing him off. “A cab is fine, but Draco won’t be happy. He hasn’t gotten used to cars yet.”

“Not my problem,” Harry told her before trying to sneak another swipe at his drink, but Hermione pulled it even further out of his reach.

“Do they even have cabs all the way out here?” she asked while doing so, raising her eyebrows at Harry.

“Yes,” Harry answered, giving up and slumping back in his seat. “It’s only, like, one guy though. I think his name might be Erwin. Or Edgar? Something with an E.”

Hermione’s eyebrows cinched disbelievingly. “That doesn’t seem right at all. How would you even find him if it’s only one guy?”

“You don’t find Erwin,” Harry told her gravely, “Erwin finds you.”

“Merlin,” Hermione sighed before standing up and steadying herself on the back of the booth. “I’m closing our tab now. Harry, can you find Draco and Theodore so we can start heading out? I haven’t seen either of them in ages.” 

“Oh, I think they went out front for some air,” Luna informed them flippantly before taking one final sip of her lemon water. “I can come with, if you’d like.”

“Rendezvous in five?” Ron suggested, standing up after Hermione. 

“Sounds good,” Harry agreed, and then they wobbled off in their separate ways. Somehow, the bar was still ridiculously crowded despite the late hour. He had to grab onto Luna’s wrist as they squeezed towards the exit so he wasn’t engulfed by the pumping music and humid bodies clogging up the main floor, creating a sort of human chain as they weaved together through the hazy, neon-tinged mass. 

Spilling out onto the sidewalk was like submerging from a hot, sweaty pool, and Harry sighed as he breathed in the cool night air, steadying his weight against an exposed brick wall. Luna leaned next to him, her movements slow and smooth like she was wading through water. “What’s the plan?” Harry asked her groggily after determining that neither Malfoy nor Nott were anywhere in sight.

There was a short stretch of park right across the street where a few stragglers huddled together under a streetlight, smoke clouding their heads, and Luna pointed to them. “I’ll check the park, you check the alley? They can’t have gone far.”

“Yeah, alright.” Harry nodded affirmatively, then pushed off the wall with a heaving effort, trying not to stumble over the chipped pavement. The street was mostly empty, washed out by the flat yellow streetlights and carved with shadow. Even though he was outside, he could still feel the music vibrating his bones, making his vision pulse as he rounded the sharp corner into the alley and abruptly stumbled onto something he probably wasn’t meant to see.

He almost wished he missed it; it would’ve been an easy thing to do, given the jagged shadows and congregation of aluminum bins that theoretically should have blocked his view. There were bodies shifting against the far wall of the alley, and Harry should have just ignored them, but a hitched gasp and a flash of platinum hair locked him suddenly and unwillingly into place. 

Malfoy was the one pressed against the wall, his head tilted up and exposing an alabaster strip of skin that was under the command of another sandy-haired man that Harry instinctively knew was Nott. The gasp had to have come from Malfoy, because his eyes were now latched onto Harry’s, wide and grey and full of something that Harry didn’t recognise. Something intense and untamed. 

Harry’s mouth opened, but no words came out. 

Malfoy didn’t look away, even as his pale hand slid suddenly into the dusty locks of Nott’s hair and let his head roll back further. Even as his legs shifted and a strained noise echoed off the dull brick. Even as Harry’s limbs turned to jelly and his heart started beating out of his chest. 

Malfoy didn’t look away.

Overwhelmed, Harry stumbled backwards and out of the alleyway, grasping onto the wall of the bar to steady himself. There was another flash of blonde ahead of him, but it wasn’t platinum this time. It was just Luna.

“Did you find them?” she asked lightly, hopping up onto the curb and holding her arms wide for balance. “They weren’t in the park. A man did offer me a good deal on some weed, but I don’t have cash on me.”

“Oh,” Harry said faintly. Mind spinning. If he was a cartoon character he’d have little birds flying around his head, probably. “I—found them.”

“Oh, good! Where—”

Luna didn’t have time to finish her question, cut off by the rest of their group tumbling through the door of the Silk Dragon. Hermione was giggling unusually loud while Ron had an arm thrown around her waist, keeping her close. Parkinson stumbled out after them, looking more frazzled than she had all night. 

“Everyone okay?” Luna asked them, switching gears and earning another bout of giggles from Hermione.

“We’re fine,” Ron assured, but there was an amused smile playing on his face, like he was trying not to laugh. “One of the barkeeps was coming onto Parkinson so ‘Mione told him she was her girlfriend.”

Harry blinked. “You what?”

“The look on his _face_ ,” Hermione wheezed, clutching onto Ron so she didn’t double over. “Merlin, we’re going to have to do that more often.”

“No, no we are not,” Parkinson cut in swiftly. “In fact, let’s never do it again. I’d much prefer it that way, thank you.”

“Oh my god, fine,” Hermione replied, still laughing. “Nice to know you don’t want to be my girlfriend. Your loss, honestly.”

Parkinson turned tired eyes on Harry. “Can we leave now?”

“Yes, not a bad idea,” Harry told her faintly, feeling as if he’d left his entire head back in the alley.

“Where’s Draco?” she followed up, which was the last question he wanted to hear right now.

“He’s—” The words felt sticky on Harry’s tongue, and all he managed to get out was the word, “Alley.”

Parkinson’s brow scrunched. “Having trouble with full sentences, Potter?”

Harry couldn’t deal with her. With any of it. “I’m finding a cab,” he decided, heart thumping in his ears as he began pushing through the group, leaving them to deal with the spectacle around the corner. He thought he heard Ron say his name as he left, but everything sounded liquidized and muted. Like there was water in his ears. 

He walked to the end of the block, focusing only on his steps and the way his feet hit the solid pavement, afraid to think about anything else. Anyone else. Because if he thought about anyone else, he would think about Malfoy, and he didn’t want to think about Malfoy or the way his eyes flashed and his breath stuttered in the darkness.

But now Harry was thinking about Malfoy. _Malfoy._ Draco Malfoy.

Draco, Draco, Draco.

Harry braced himself against a lamppost, feeling winded just at the thought of his name. What was happening to him? Where did this come from?

Harry felt like he had mental whiplash. He couldn’t be attracted to Draco. That wasn’t allowed. He hated Draco, and Draco hated him; that’s how it worked. That was their thing, and it was fine. Good, even. They weren’t built to like each other. They were fundamentally different down to their very cores, molten and hot, and there was no way on Earth they could ever begin to move beyond that.

They didn’t match. It wasn’t right. Harry couldn’t be attracted to him.

And even if he was, Draco was occupied. He was off the market and in the hands of a boy named Theodore Nott. And that was _perfectly fine_ , because Harry didn’t want him to be on the market.

At this point, Harry didn’t know what he wanted. To go home, maybe. To sleep for a year.

Legs feeling like jelly, he sunk down to the ground and sat roughly on the curb, all his weight lumped against the base of the lamp post. He couldn’t handle this. He was drunk, his stomach in knots. He needed to go home. 

Something light touched his shoulder. A hand; a familiar hand.

“Harry,” came Hermione’s soft voice from behind him. “Are you alright?”

 _Good question,_ Harry thought. “‘M fine,” he answered fuzzily, and then he heard a rustle of clothing and felt Hermione sit down next to him. “Nauseous.”

“Do you need anything? I brought some travel-sized potions with me.” She held up her small leather purse with a sympathetic smile. 

“No, no, thanks.” Harry shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” 

Hermione set her purse down, falling quiet for a long moment. Harry glanced at her, then back at the bar where everyone else was still crowded. Everyone except—well. He looked back at the pavement and pinned his gaze on a small chunk of loose asphalt near his shoe. 

“Harry,” Hermione said again, lowering her voice. “What’s going on? You can be honest with me.”

Harry kept staring at the chunk of asphalt. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She gave him a look. “Come on. Talk to me.” 

Harry said nothing, digging his mouth into the corduroy fabric stretched over his drawn-up knees.

“What’s going on with Draco?”

His head jerked. “What?”

“Draco,” Hermione repeated softly. Her hand came up again, touching his shoulder and rubbing up to his neck comfortingly. “You’ve been side-eyeing him all evening. What’s going on there?”

“I haven’t been _side-eyeing him_ ,” Harry objected, even though he absolutely had been. “And nothing’s going on there.”

“Harry,” she said pointedly.

“Hermione,” he shot back, mimicking her tone.

“I’m not stupid.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not subtle.”

“...I know.”

Hermione’s head tilted. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Harry ducked his head back into his knees. “Yes,” he sighed, muffled.

She rubbed her hand up his shoulder again, squeezing it slightly. “It’s fine if you have feelings for him. I can’t say I understand it, but I’m here to support you.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry mumbled to his knees, wondering distractedly how she always managed to figure him out so easily. “I don’t understand it either.”

“That’s fine too,” she assured. “Feelings are complicated. Christ, I’m engaged and even I don’t understand them half of the time.”

Harry lifted his head, unsure if he’d heard her right. “Sorry, did you say engaged?”

The corners of Hermione’s lips quirked, and she pulled her hand off his shoulder to display it in full, spreading her fingers out. Sure enough, a silver-studded band on her ring finger glinted gold under the orange street lights. Harry’s breath hitched.

“Oh,” he said softly, staring at the ring. “Oh, ‘Mione.”

“Ron proposed last week,” she explained gently, holding her hand out in front of her like she was looking at the ring for the first time, too. She was smiling, faint and secretive. “That’s part of why we invited you out tonight. So we could tell you in person.”

“Jesus,” Harry said, reaching out to take her hand and run his thumb over the raised jewel. It was a deep amber color, not too flashy, but certainly not small. “How did I miss this? Have you been wearing it all evening?”

Hermione’s smile stretched. “Yes, but I didn’t expect you to notice it. You’re not exactly the most observant person.”

“Hey!” Harry exclaimed mildly, laughing. “That’s uncalled for.”

“I’m right, though.”

“Not my point.” Harry grinned, then clasped her hand with both of his. “Jesus, ‘Mione, I’m happy for you. I’m so happy for you.”

“Yeah?” She returned the grin. “Me too.”

“When’s the wedding gonna be?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She carefully extracted her hand from between Harry’s, but not before pressing a gentle, motherly peck to the back of his knuckles. “We were potentially thinking May, when the weather starts to get warmer, but we haven’t settled on anything yet. It’ll be small, though. Only immediate relatives and close friends.”

Harry’s heart thumped. He felt dizzy all over again. “So soon?”

She shrugged lightly. “We want to do it as soon as possible.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Right. Of course.”

Hermione smiled again, eyes crinkling, but there was something sad in there as she met Harry’s gaze. “Anyways, enough about me, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about this when we’re sober. We were talking about you.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about me. Your stuff is much nicer.”

“You have to get through the hard stuff to get to the nice stuff,” she pointed out gently. “You should talk to Draco.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Harry,” she began to chide, but then she didn’t get a chance to finish her thought because, like an angel descending from heaven, a sleek black cab slowed to a stop in front of the curb and the driver’s window rolled down.

“You folks need a ride?” the driver asked, poking his head out curiously.

“ _Yes,_ god, yes,” Harry said immediately, unfolding his legs and starting to pull himself up into a standing position. “Erwin, right?”

The familiar cabbie gave him a toothy smile. “The one and only. Where are you two headed?”

“North,” Harry told him graciously before helping Hermione clamber up beside him. “Towards Bedford.”

“Doable.” Erwin nodded approvingly, then jerked his chin over Harry’s shoulder. “They with you?”

Harry followed his movement and looked back towards the bar, where Luna and Ron were engaged in some spirited conversation together and Parkinson was holding onto a ruffled-looking Nott with one arm and a flushed Draco with the other. Harry's eyes couldn’t help but linger on the latter; his button-up shirt was wrinkled and untucked, his hair mussed up. Harry’s heart thumped loud and hard against his ribcage, but he looked away before Draco could see him looking. 

“Yeah,” he told the cabbie a bit shakily. “They’re with us.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for mentions of death threats towards the middle of the chapter; nothing graphic. see "more notes" if you need to know what parts to skip over <3

Ron and Hermione left before noon the following day—far too soon, in Harry’s opinion—but not too soon for Ron to make an entire breakfast spread complete with pancakes and French toast. “The only suitable cure for a hangover,” he declared with a flourish of his spatula, earning an exasperated look from his fiance and an excited clap from Luna.

They’d all been sitting around the dining table when Harry came stumbling down the stairs, which was certainly a sight to behold that early in the morning; it was rare for them to be all in one place, and witnessing it made Harry’s heart expand tenfold. It was almost, _almost_ enough to make him forget about the headache pounding at his temples, but not quite. He’d woken up feeling like a balloon full of hot air had inflated at the base of his cranium, uncomfortably pressing everything against the front of his skull and making his head throb. It had been a long time since he’d woken up with a hangover, but the moment he’d opened his eyes he could tell this one was going to be the worst. 

Granted, it did get better after a generous serving of pancakes and a steaming cup of coffee, but there was still pain lingering behind his eyes hours later after he’d said goodbye to all three of his friends. “Get some rest,” Hermione advised him on the way out as she tugged on her coat. “I mean it. Take a day or two off work, if you need.”

“And drink lots of water,” Luna added meaningfully, reaching up to pat his cheek before he closed the door on them. “Take care of yourself. You deserve a break.”

“Thank you,” Harry told them genuinely as he hung on the doorknob. “I will.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

And he did. He took the rest of the weekend off, slipping into his favorite pair of slouchy joggers and making a nest of blankets on his sofa where he could burrow for hours at a time. It felt strange not to work on pruning the orchard or re-fertilising the soil in the herb garden, but the idea of doing either of those things was daunting even despite the strangeness. 

For emotional compensation, he decided to bunker down in his living room and rewatch an array of his favorite films, only moving from the sofa for intermittent meals that weren’t really meals, just scraps of whatever he could find in his pantry. He watched _Love Actually_ a few times, huddled under a knit blanket with his fingers wrapped around a scalding hot mug of cocoa—the cabbage mug, to be exact—and cried a bit at the airport scene like he always did. Then he rewound it and cried a little more the second time. 

On Monday, he woke up to a world coated in white. The earliness of it was surprising; normally it didn’t start snowing until late December or early January, but Harry wasn’t complaining. The snow virtually immobilized the entire orchard, giving him yet another excuse to stay indoors and rattle around his house like a retired man in his seventies might. It was also the first day that Phoebe hadn’t left in the morning—instead she was snuggled up in the mound of blankets at the foot of Harry’s bed, exactly how she was supposed to be. Part of Harry felt inclined to send a quick note next door and tell the Slytherins not to worry about her absence, but then he remembered that making contact with them was the absolute last thing he wanted to do, so he didn’t.

On Tuesday it snowed again. Wednesday it didn’t, but the soil in the yard was still too frozen for Harry to break through. So instead, he decided to sleep in until noon. He played solitaire with himself in front of the fire and won every time. He listened to Mazzy Star and Elliott Smith over the wireless as he cooked lunch. He cracked open _The Lightning Thief_ while thinking of Luna, then closed it again after reading the words, “Go on with what your heart tells you, or you will lose all.”

He didn’t think of Draco. Or, rather, he didn’t purposefully think of Draco. Somehow Draco still ended up at the forefront of his brain, his name stuck to the roof of Harry’s mouth like warm honey. 

Harry saw flashes of him when his eyes slid closed at night. He saw writhing bodies pressed against brick and sharp eyes cutting through shadows. He heard staggered breathing and shoes scuffling against pavement. 

He felt like his head was underwater. 

On Saturday, he woke up and decided that having to endure an entire dinner that evening with Draco in attendance would be the worst possible idea on the planet, so he sent a note to Luna and Neville telling them apologetically that he was under the weather. Reluctantly, after about an hour of staring at a blank piece of parchment, Harry copied the note and sent it to the Slytherins via owl, then felt immensely relieved when it returned to his window empty-handed. He didn’t think he could handle seeing Draco’s handwriting telling him to “get well soon,” or worse, making some snarky joke at his expense. He couldn’t handle it.

Luna and Neville understood—of course they understood—and told him graciously to get some rest, to hydrate. Luna also sent him a container of vegan noodle soup and a small bottle of mint essential oil, instructing him to use it in the bath to relieve any headaches or congestion, because she was the best person Harry knew. 

He wasn’t depressed, or anything; he’d been depressed before and it hadn’t felt like this, not in the same way. He just felt—fragile. Tender, maybe. Like he was a bruise on the knee of a child who’d tripped at a playground. Who’d been knocked over by someone bigger, or stronger, or more careless.

He could get up, though. He could pull himself out of his reverie if he needed to. He didn’t need help.

Except, several hours later when the clock struck 7, his doorbell rang—and Draco Malfoy was standing on his front porch. 

Harry thought that he might need a little help, now.

“You look like shit,” was the first thing Draco said when the door opened, his brows peaked high on his forehead. He didn’t look much different than he had a week ago, dressed casually in a black jumper and trousers that were creased sharply down the front. His skin was still pale and his hair was still neat and parted down the middle, crisscrossing in front of his eyes.

Harry gave him a long, blank stare, trying to ignore the way his heart was thumping in his ears. “Nice to see you, too. What exactly are you—”

“It’s Saturday,” Draco interrupted. When Harry continued to stare at him, he rephrased: “Saturday dinner. The thing we’ve been doing for over a month.”

“I’m sick,” Harry said slowly, fingers tightening around the doorknob. “I sent you all a note. And why is it only you?”

Draco returned his stare. “Because you’re sick.”

Harry was confused. “I’m confused.”

Draco rolled his eyes and jutted his pointy chin forward. “We took a vote on who was going to come tonight, and unfortunately I was the victor. We’re checking up on you, Potter.”

“Is that what’s happening?” Harry asked flatly.

“Yes, that’s what’s happening.”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Are you going to let me in?” Draco asked tiredly, letting his head roll forward, hair falling into his eyes and making Harry’s heart skip.

“How long is this check-up lasting for, exactly?” Harry asked, folding his arms over his torso protectively.

Draco shrugged. “I’m making you dinner.” 

Harry nearly fainted. “You’re _what?_ ”

It was then that he noticed the cylindrical container tucked in one of Draco’s elbows—a container that looked exactly like the one Luna had sent him. Draco cocked his eyebrow knowingly.

“Luna,” Harry said with slow realisation. “Luna put you up to this.”

“Indeed.”

“Why would Luna put you up to this?”

“You’ll have to ask her that yourself. Now would you please let me in so we can get this over with?”

Harry’s legs felt weak. He couldn’t handle this. “I really don’t want to let you in.”

“And I really don’t want to come in, yet here I am asking your permission,” Draco countered witheringly.

They stared at each other a moment longer, the stirrings of a challenge brewing in the space between them. Stirrings that were both familiar and unfamiliar—charged with energy Harry recognised, but laced with something deeper. Something more intense.

There was a gruff bark from behind Harry, and he twisted to see his dog standing at the bottom of the stairs, her tail wagging brightly at the appearance of Draco. When he looked back, Draco’s eyebrows had risen even higher, this time with amusement. “Well?” 

Harry sighed, hating that his dog held so much power over him, and let Draco in.

*

“Potter,” came an irritated call from the kitchen. “Your bloody stove isn’t working.”

Harry, who was in the middle of grabbing a short stack of bowls from the mahogany hutch in the hallway, called back exasperatedly, “You have to use magic."

“Of course you do. Can you come in here?”

Draco was bent over the stove when Harry finally ventured into the kitchen, setting the bowls down on the counter and trying not to snicker as Draco unsuccessfully tried to twist the burner knobs on. His mouth was set into a frustrated scowl, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and exposing a faint bruise of color on his forearm. Harry averted his eyes and pulled his wand from his waistband, pointing it at the stove. 

“ _Incendio._ ”

The front burner flared up, causing Draco to awkwardly jerk backwards into Harry. “ _Merlin_ ,” he exclaimed, swiveling around and fixing Harry with an even more outraged scowl. “Warn a man, will you?”

Harry refrained from rolling his eyes again by stuffing his wand back into his pocket. “Not my fault you can’t do magic, Malfoy.”

“I never _said_ it was, I would just prefer it if you didn’t set me on fire, you dick.”

“Sorry,” Harry apologised monotonously, not meaning it even a little bit. He was burning up in the places where Draco had bumped into him.

Draco folded his arms, eyes slanting. “It is your fault for having a stove that only works with magic, though. What’s with that?”

Harry shrugged, turning away to finish setting the table. “It’s cheaper.”

“Right, because you’re so financially unstable,” Draco said disbelievingly. Then, “Where are your saucepans?”

“Bottom drawer next to the fridge. And what makes you say that?”

Draco opened the bottom drawer next to the fridge. “Oh, just the fact that you’re living alone on a huge piece of property while selling apples for a living. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘I’m poor’ does it?”

Harry stared hard at the back of the other man’s head. “That’s just fucking rich coming from you, Malfoy. Do you even have a job, or is your daddy paying for all your expenses out of pocket?”

Draco rummaged loudly through the drawer, pots and pans clanging together. “That’s none of your business.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“No,” Harry agreed as he folded a napkin and set it neatly next to Draco’s place setting, “you don’t.”

The drawer slammed, rattling the room. “I hate it when we argue, you know.”

Harry scoffed to himself. “Do you? That’s a bit hard to believe, given our entire bloody history.”

“Potter,” Draco said with sharp frustration, prompting Harry to look up from the table and meet his scalding pewter gaze. “I’m serious. You make me crazy.”

“Yeah, well you make me crazy, too,” Harry conceded dryly. “There’s something we can agree on.” He didn’t bother specifying what _kind_ of crazy, of course. That was up to interpretation.

Draco continued to stare, the tips of his ears turning red, and Harry wondered bitterly if the rest of the evening was going to be like this. If it was, he didn’t think he’d survive the whole thing; Luna and Neville would have to come and scrape his exploded remains off the walls. 

_At least you’re not lusting over him,_ a fortifying voice whispered in the back of his mind. But it worked counterintuitively, unwillingly reminding Harry that he was—against all better judgement—genuinely attracted to this tall, pale, vigorously irritating man. He just couldn’t win.

“I think you should leave, now,” Draco spoke up then, breaking eye contact and setting the copper saucepan in his hand over the flickering stove.

“What?” Harry asked, uncomprehending. “I—this is my kitchen, Malfoy.”

“I don’t care.” Draco popped the lid to the container of soup, swirling it around a few times before beginning to pour it into the pot. “You’ll get in my way. Go lie down, or read a book, or something. Go be a sick man.”

“A sick man,” Harry echoed nonsensically, shaking his head and dropping his handful of silverware onto the dining table. “Fine, whatever. I don’t even know why I’m arguing. Try not to set my house on fire, please.”

“Noted,” Draco said, cranking up one of the knobs on the front of the stove and making the orange flame flare up dangerously. Harry left the room, thinking that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go write his will just in case he really did end up dead by the end of the night.

* * *

Potter was acting weird.

That wasn’t breaking news, exactly—Potter had been acting weird for over twenty years—but this was an unusual kind of weird. A kind of weird where he was making eye contact with Draco much more than necessary and turning beet red when Draco asked him simple questions, like where he kept his salt shakers or if he was “enjoying the soup.” Draco had a sneaking suspicion that it all had something to do with what happened at the Silk Dragon, with Theo and the alley and everything, but he didn’t dare bring up such a volatile topic. 

_It’s probably nothing,_ Draco decided halfway through dinner while sitting through a suffocating bout of silence, Potter refusing to meet his gaze across the way as he poked quietly at his meal. Potter probably didn’t even remember the alley incident—he’d been more drunk than Draco was, after all. 

But the voice in Draco’s head disagreed. _Of course he remembers,_ it whispered lowly, slithering through Draco’s train of thought. _How could he not remember?_ Draco had never experienced such an intense moment before. It was like time had surrendered its iron-fisted hold and locked the two of them into place, unable to look away.

Draco had been terrified. He thought Potter might’ve been terrified, too, but then again Potter wasn’t terrified of anything. He’d proven that time and time again.

But, still, regardless of the incident, Potter was acting weird; he was being clumsier than usual and spacing out at odd intervals. It was peculiar, and unsettling, and also incredibly endearing, which Draco just fucking hated. He didn’t understand how Potter could go around making the strangest things endearing, like wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve or tracing little shapes in the condensation on his water glass. He ate like he was a small child, picking out all the carrots from the soup and putting them to the side of his plate until he’d finished the noodles and broth, and Draco couldn’t help but watch him the entire time with poorly-concealed interest.

Potter was eccentric and oafish and incredibly, undeniably magnetic, and Draco wanted to despise him so badly that he considered blinding himself multiple times throughout dinner. That way he would never have to look at Potter’s inexplicably attractive face ever again.

Oddly enough, the weirdest part of dinner wasn’t the staring or the blushing or the dismantling of Draco’s well-cooked vegan soup; the weirdest part was when Potter asked, completely out of the blue, “Do you miss it?” then immediately looked like he wanted to take it back.

Draco, who hadn’t really looked away from him the entire dinner, frowned across the table and set down his spoon with a _clink._ “Miss what?”

Potter’s face did the thing again; a dark, bashful shade of red bloomed across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He looked down at the table, twisting his mouth with apparent frustration. “Magic.”

Draco blinked. _Oh._ He was referring to the stove incident, then.

“Not as much as I thought I would,” Draco said truthfully, picking up his spoon again and swirling the remaining broth around at the bottom of his bowl. 

Potter seemed surprised by this answer, posture straightening as he perked up. “Why not?

Draco shrugged a little. “I don’t know, it’s complicated. Why are you asking me this?”

Potter’s mouth pressed into a thin line, his top lip sucking in. “I don’t know,” he decided after a beat, shoulders slumping. “I was just wondering. And I’m trying not to argue with you.”

“How considerate,” Draco said dully. Then, before Potter could snap something back, he added, “I guess—I don’t miss it because I still have it. Technically speaking, I mean. I can still feel it in my veins, so it’s not really _gone_ gone.”

“You just don’t use it,” Potter concluded, leaning back in his chair. 

“Precisely.”

“Hm.” Potter’s brow was now furrowed thoughtfully, pinched in the middle and creasing the tan, soft-looking skin between his eyes. Draco wanted to smooth it down with his thumb. “I still don’t understand that. It’s not like you have the Trace on you or anything, right?”

Draco didn’t want to talk about this. “It’s complicated,” he said again, firmer this time before changing the subject. “Do you have any wine? Red, specifically?”

Potter levelled a long, calculating look at him, then nodded and stood from his chair. “Probably. Let me check.”

“Thank you.”

He disappeared into the hallway, leaving Draco to sip at his soup in relative silence. Except he wasn’t completely alone—Phoebe was lying on her side under the table, her tail lazily flicking Draco’s ankle every so often. She’d stuck to his side nearly the entire time he’d been here, following him around the kitchen and whining at him when he didn’t let her taste any of Luna’s homemade soup, and Draco could tell it was getting on Potter’s nerves. 

Of course, Draco didn’t know why Phoebe was so attached to him; it didn’t bother him anymore, now that he’d gotten used to it, but it was still an undeniably strange phenomenon. He didn’t even like dogs all that much—in full disclosure, he was more of a cat person—and yet he’d managed to form a bond with this animal without even trying. With all that considered, Draco didn’t blame Potter for being irritated. He had every right.

Potter returned from the hall carrying two hefty bottles of wine, both looking seldom touched and plentiful. “I’ve got daisy and elf-made,” he announced as he thunked them down in front of Draco. “No red though, sorry.”

“These will do fine,” Draco assured, pulling the elf-made bottle closer so he could read the label. He expected Potter to sit back down and maybe pop the cork on the daisy wine, but for some reason he remained standing, hands curled bracingly over the back of his chair. 

He was silent for a long moment, gaze unfocused. Then, unexpectedly, “Is it because of your wand?”

Draco blinked up from the label. “Pardon?”

“Your magic,” Potter said, looking almost uncomfortable with the question. His fingers flexed around the chair. “Is it—are you not using magic because of your wand?”

Draco’s throat tightened. He didn’t want to answer that, feeling suddenly and uncomfortably transparent. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You went to Azkaban,” Potter said, which was a sentence that shouldn’t have hurt Draco’s chest as much as it did. “Not for long, obviously, but you did—didn’t you?”

“I… yes.”

Potter snapped his fingers knowingly. “And anyone who gets released from Azkaban has their wand tracked. _Fuck,_ I can’t believe I’m just remembering this now. Is that why, then?” 

Draco was stricken. 

“How did you know?” he asked quietly, voice wavering.

Something conflicted flashed across Potter’s face, like he couldn’t decide if he should be triumphant for being right or concerned by Draco’s tone. “I had a life before moving out here,” he started, dropping his tone. “That was one of the first things they taught us in Auror training—that once a convict is released they don’t really get all their rights back. The wand thing is for public—”

“Public safety,” Draco cut in. “I know. My parole wizard made that abundantly clear.”

“Right,” Potter said, breaking eye contact. “Right, yeah, of course. Sorry. I just—it’s clicking for me, now.” He glanced back up, almost furtively. “For what it’s worth, Hermione and I thought that rule was preposterous. Especially for juveniles. It’s on her political agenda to get it repealed, I think.”

Of course it was. “Granger being an advocate of prison reform isn’t too surprising,” Draco said honestly, leaning back in his chair and feeling a grey sort of emotion wash over him. “I don’t think it’s too preposterous, though, if we’re talking about hardened criminals. But the fact that the rule extends to every convict ever has been a bit—inconvenient for me.”

“Inconvenient,” Potter repeated, the corners of his mouth twitching. “I think that might be an understatement given that you’ve been on the run from the Ministry for the past four years.”

Draco tipped his head back. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“So you’ve said. Three times.”

“And yet you keep asking questions.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Draco studied the wood above his head; the boards were splintered and sagging, but not in a neglected way. In a well-loved way. 

“Yes,” he said to the ceiling.

“Okay,” Potter replied. “But I have one more.”

Draco closed his eyes. “Merlin above. What?”

A beat passed. Then, hesitantly, “What if I told you I could give your magic back?”

Draco opened his eyes.

*

It was heavier than he remembered.

“It’s been sitting in a box in the back of my wardrobe,” Potter told him after handing it over, their fingers brushing as the smooth, dark wood touched Draco’s skin for the first time in half a decade. Ten inches of hawthorn and a unicorn hair core; reasonably springy, supple enough to bend. Heavy in his palms. “I meant to return it, but there was never a right time.”

The handle was cool, coated in dust. Draco felt eleven years old.

“Is now the right time?” he asked, lifting his head and meeting Potter’s deep juniper gaze.

Potter’s lips turned up. “That’s up to you, I think.”

Draco’s grip tightened, feeling a small pulse of energy pump through his fingers and up his arm. “But it belongs to you,” he said quietly, the words feeling null on his tongue.

Potter shook his head, sitting back on the edge of the table. “It’s always been weak for me. I know I won it from you, but I don’t think its allegiance has ever fully changed.”

“You defeated Voldemort with it,” Draco pointed out, running his pointer finger over the tip.

“Not quite,” Potter disagreed, looking the slightest bit surprised at Draco’s flippant use of Voldemort's name. “He defeated himself. Your wand had very little to do with it.”

“Still,” Draco insisted. Every nerve in his body was buzzing. It felt like he was holding a bone in his hands, one that was plucked from his own skeleton.

“Try a spell.”

He stilled. “What?”

“Just a small one. _Wingardium Leviosa_.”

“I’d really rather not.”

“Why?” Potter crossed his ankles, peering curiously at Draco. “Don’t you want to see if it works?”

“I—” Draco took a breath. “Of course I do, but I can’t.”

“Come on,” Potter persisted. “It’s not like the Ministry will be able to trace it or anything—you haven’t won it from me, so it’s technically still mine.”

“That’s exactly why I can’t. It won’t answer to me.”

“It will if you try hard enough.”

“ _No,_ it won’t. Wands don’t work that way, Potter.”

“Maybe not, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

Draco didn’t understand how they’d gotten here. “It won’t work,” he said again, but his tone was faltering. Potter’s eyes on him were earnest and insistent and so bloody green that Draco wanted to reach over and slide his eyelids shut. They were too much; too intense.

Then, Potter did the unimaginable; he backed down. “Alright,” he said, raising his palms in surrender. “Fine. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I’m not trying to pressure you, I just thought you might want to try.”

“I do,” Draco said quickly. “I do. Trust me, I want to, more than anything in the world. But I…” He looked down at the wand—the wand that he’d cast his very first spell with, that had kept him company all throughout his tumultuous teenage years, that had been loyal to him until the end—and decided that he’d outgrown it a long time ago. “It doesn’t belong to me anymore,” he finished, looking at Potter resolutely. “It’s yours. Even if you never use it, it’s yours.”

Draco held the piece of hawthorn out. Potter blinked at it, then up at Draco, a frown pulling at his lips. “I’m not taking that from you.”

“Potter—”

“No,” Potter stopped him, straightening up off the table and pushing the wand back towards Draco. “Keep it. I want you to.”

Draco gave him a look. “I don’t want it.”

“I don’t want it either.”

Draco bit down on a frustrated sigh. “Glad we’ve cleared that up. What do you suggest we do, if neither of us want it? Shall we snap it in half? Set it on fire? Donate it to a museum?”

Potter rolled his eyes. “We can’t—” He paused. Took a moment. “Actually, that might work.”

Draco scrunched his nose. “Would it? I doubt any museum would take it, magic or Muggle.”

“No,” Potter said. “Snapping it in half.”

“Oh.”

“Would that work for you?”

Draco blinked. “I… suppose.”

“Great, let’s do that then,” Potter resolved. “That way no one can use it. We could even bury it in the backyard, or something, maybe grow a tree.”

“A wand tree?” Draco asked, raising his brow.

“Yes, exactly, a wand tree. A tree that grows wands.”

“I... think that would just be a normal tree. Given that wands are made out of trees, and everything.”

“I like my version better,” Potter said, amusement glinting in his eyes. Draco felt his cheeks go warm. 

“Your version is quite literally impossible, but fine. We can grow a wand tree.”

Potter grinned, and Draco felt something sharp and hot jolt up from the base of his spine. _I did that,_ he thought with silent triumph. _I made Potter smile._

Draco thought, maybe, that might’ve been the best thing to happen all day. 

“I’ll go grab our coats,” Potter said, and five minutes later he and Draco were standing on the bottom step of the back porch, hands in their pockets, Draco’s foot hovering over his wand.

“On three?” Draco asked, breath puffing out white in the frigid darkness.

“On three,” Potter agreed. He was bent down by Draco’s foot, holding the wand with both hands so Draco could stomp it clean in half. He was backlit by the low yellow light spilling onto the porch from the house, giving his silhouette a sort of fuzzy yellow halo and making him look soft and untouchable. “Ready?”

For the second time that evening, Draco wondered how exactly they’d gotten here. “Ready.”

“One...” Potter started.

Draco took a breath in.

“Two...” 

Blood rushed in his ears. He was doing this. 

_I’m doing this._

“Three.”

His foot came down, and a sharp _snap_ ripped through the darkness. Potter pulled his hands away sharply and the wand clattered to the ground, splintered and broken. There was a small plume of silver smoke, released from the chipped edges of the wand like an exhale into the still evening air.

“Well,” Potter said, straightening up and brushing his hands on his jeans. “There we go.”

“There we go,” Draco repeated mildly, staring at the remains of his wand like he’d never seen it before. It was hard to believe that this was the wand that had chosen him all those years ago. That this was the wand he’d cast a thousand _Accio_ s and a million _Lumos_ es with, now nothing more than a splintered twig in the dirt. One among hundreds.

Whether this marked the end of an era or the beginning of one, he wasn’t sure—all he knew was that, whichever it may be, he and Potter were standing side by side for the first time in his life. 

For now, that felt like enough.

* * *

They decided to bury Draco’s used-to-be-wand at the base of a bedraggled apple tree in the North corner of the orchard. Harry didn’t tell him why, exactly—only that it would be the best spot for a wand tree to grow. Theoretically. “Any parting words?” he asked before kicking the last layer of soil over the small dip in the earth, to which Draco answered with a withering look and a shake of his head.

“Let’s just get this over with, please.”

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

“Alright.” 

There was silence as Harry covered the hole, the snow-softened dirt soiling up the toes and laces of his trainers. When it was done, he took a step back and rooted his hands in his pockets; there was a slight breeze tumbling through the dark, ruffling the greenery and pushing his hair into his eyes.

Feeling as if they only had one possible option going forward, he looked to Draco and asked hopefully, “Would you like to get drunk, now?”

Draco was pale and washed out under the moonlight, luminescing gently against the stirring black background, and his small, twitching smile seemed to make him glow even more. Harry liked it when he smiled. “Very much so.”

So they got drunk. 

It wasn’t the over-the-top kind of drunk, though, like how they’d been at the bar the other night; it was the warm kind of drunk. The kind of drunk where they sat on opposite sides of Harry’s sofa with their legs crossed and drank elf-made wine out of Mason jars, because Harry told Draco it was “the classy way” to drink wine and Draco didn’t believe him, but did it anyway. It was the kind of drunk where they didn’t speak for long stretches of time, staring off into some transient vanishing point fixed in the centre of the room, and when they did speak up, their words were diluted and nonsensical, their questions quietly careless.

“You’re not really ill, are you?” Draco asked when they were halfway through the bottle, his head pillowed against the back cushion, his eyes strangely sincere.

“No,” Harry answered truthfully, trying to avoid staring at Draco by fixing his gaze into his jar, swirling the bitter gold liquid around the bottom. “You caught me.”

“So, what is it then?”

“What’s what?”

“What made you so adamant on being alone tonight?”

That was a good question. “I don’t know,” Harry answered slowly, sinking lower onto the couch and uncrossing his legs so he could prop them up on the coffee table. “I just needed a break, I guess.”

“A break from what?”

 _You,_ Harry’s brain supplied automatically. “Everything,” he said instead.

“Hm,” Draco hummed lowly, shifting in his seat. “I can understand that, I suppose. Your life seems exhausting.”

“It—can be.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

Harry blinked, still not making eye contact. He didn’t have a good answer for any of these questions, but Draco wasn’t asking them like an interrogator—he was asking them like he was curious. Genuinely curious. Like he actually wanted to know what was going on inside Harry’s brain. “I guess,” Harry started with a substantial, bracing inhale, “Saying I was sick was just an easier excuse. I didn’t want to worry anyone. Luna or Nev, I mean, not—not you all.”

“Right,” Draco said, looking amused. “Because we Slytherins are so incapable of human emotion?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Fair enough. But—in my unprofessional opinion—I think your friends would have worried either way, even if they weren’t all in your face about it. Luna was certainly in mine.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, smiling softly to himself. “She can be like that. She likes you, though. All of you.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” Draco said with a curt laugh. “She doesn’t keep it a secret. You know she hugged me the first time we saw her?”

“That’s… believable, actually.”

“Mhm. Scared the shit out of me at the time, but I think I’m getting used to her, finally.”

“Good,” Harry said, smiling softly. “That’s good.”

“Very good,” Draco agreed. Strange, how they were doing that now—agreeing on things. “But—what about you?”

Harry glanced up, chest tightening. “What about me?”

Draco wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead his eyes were fixed on the worn couch cushion, his fingers picking absently at a loose thread. “Do you... like us?” he asked, voice dropping low, threaded with insecurity. 

Something cracked inside Harry’s chest like soft clay and warmth spilled into his abdomen, pooling around his ribs. “I think you’re growing on me, Malfoy,” he admitted as that warmth began to spread up his neck and to his face, curling around the backs of his ears.

Draco must have felt it too, because his cheeks were dusted with pink when he lifted his head and met Harry’s gaze. “If that’s the case, we should probably start calling each other by our first names.”

“I can do that,” Harry said, lifting his chin. “Draco.”

Draco went even pinker. “Brilliant,” he said lightly, clearly trying to act casual. “Harry.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “That wasn’t so hard.”

“No,” Draco conceded. “It wasn’t.” He shifted in his seat again and unfolded his legs, his back arching as he stretched his arms above his head. “What time is it?” he asked through a yawn, and Harry glanced waywardly at the clock above the mantelpiece. 

“Half past nine, I think.”

Draco’s eyes went wide. “Salazar, is it really? I should be getting back.”

“Mm,” Harry said, bobbing his head in understanding. “Not a bad idea. Are you okay to walk, or d’you need a Side-Along?”

“And risk breaking our wards again? Thank you for the offer, but I’ll pass.” Draco heaved himself off the sofa, wobbling a bit when he was fully upright. “I can walk. See?” He took two steps forward, lurching a bit and not really proving his point.

“If you say so,” Harry allowed, not wanting to argue despite his skepticism. He followed Draco’s lead anyway, levering himself off the sofa and balancing his weight against one of its arms while blood rushed to his head. As Draco started off down the hall, Harry plucked their near-empty Mason jars from the coffee table and wobbled into the kitchen, dropping them into the sink unceremoniously. The floorboards in the corridor creaked gently, followed by a rhythmic clicking of paws that signalled the movement of Phoebe. Knowing her, she was probably shadowing Draco towards the foyer, her eyes large and pleading for him to stay.

“No,” came Draco’s soft answer, muffled by the thin strip of wall that separated them. “Not tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, daft animal.”

Harry couldn’t help but smile to himself as he flicked the faucet on, rinsing out the jars and letting the cool bite of the tap water on his skin stir him from his half-blurred state. He felt bleary and lightheaded, like he had one foot stuck inside a dream—a dream where Draco Malfoy made him soup and babbled to his dog and refused to use magic. There was no way that was real life. 

There was more creaking in the hall, followed by a startled laugh and a breathy, “No, no, _down_ , darling. Down.”

Harry tried not to shiver at the word ‘darling’ coming out of Draco’s mouth, his accent still crystal-cut despite the alcohol soaking into his system.

 _“Can we talk?”_ Draco had asked all those weeks ago when Harry had been standing in the same exact place, washing dishes over the sink, the lights around him dim and warm.

_“About what?”_

_“Us. No, not us._ This. _This thing. Whatever’s going on here.”_

Harry still didn’t know what was going on here. He did know that something had changed, though. Something significant, if not monumental. Something that had the potential to change the tides and sweep Harry down another channel.

 _It’s real,_ he thought. It was real, and it was tangible, and it was more than Harry ever could have expected.

He turned the faucet off, listening to the steady stream of water turn into a slow drip, hitting the metal basin of the sink with soft _plunk_ s. He took a breath in through his nose, holding it at the top of his lungs like Hermione taught him to do, and by the time he released, he was ready to face the music. 

“Have everything?” he asked when he emerged into the foyer, keeping one hand wrapped around the doorframe for support. Draco was sitting on the bottom step of the stairwell with his coat on, putting on his shoes while Phoebe sniffed insistently at his knees. 

“I think so.” Draco lifted his head and looked at Harry through his fringe. “I didn’t bring much.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, trailing off as Draco finished knotting his laces and stood up from the stairs, swaying. He steadied himself against the balustrade.

“Well,” Draco started, clearly trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t end the evening on an awkward note. “I guess this is it.”

Harry was terrible at goodbyes. He’d been saying them all his life and he still didn’t know how to do them right. “I guess so.”

“Thank you for having me,” Draco said, because he was better at this. “It was certainly… an experience.”

Harry’s mouth twitched up. “That it was.” Except he didn’t know what to do next. Should he open the door? Should Draco open the door? Should they both go for the handle and see who gets there first? 

Harry’s stream of thought was cut off by Draco reaching for the door handle and gently pulling it open, sparing Harry from having to open it himself. A cool, wintery breeze spilled in from outside, sharpening the air and making Draco’s platinum hair whip around his face. “I’ll see you next Saturday?” he asked, turning slightly while keeping his hand firmly on the knob.

“Yes,” Harry confirmed starchly, even though that felt like an eternity from now. “Yeah. Next Saturday.” Then, because Draco was still swaying in place, “Are you sure you don’t need a Side-Along? I’m perfectly willing—”

“I’ll be fine,” Draco cut him off, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Really. I promise.”

“Okay,” Harry said, praying to Godric that Draco couldn’t hear the way his heart was slamming against his chest, pounding in his ears. “Fine. I don’t even care that much. Have a good night, Malfoy.”

“You too, Potter.”

The front door was almost completely closed by the time Harry lurched across the room and stuck his hand in the frame, stopping Draco from shutting it all the way. “Wait,” he said quickly, breathlessly feeling his stomach dip as Draco looked and reattached to his gaze. “Sorry, I just—”

He stopped, taking a breath.

“Thank you. For checking up on me.”

Something sparked in Draco’s gaze, like maybe he’d been waiting to hear those words for a long time but never expected them to come. “Anytime,” he replied, nearly a murmur, and Harry didn’t register how close they were until he felt Draco’s breath on his nose and eyelashes. They were unusually close, actually, half separated by the door, faces mere inches apart. 

One tilt up, and Harry could do something he’d never dreamt was possible. Just one tilt—

“Goodnight, Harry,” Draco said as he stepped back from the door, even though they’d already done that part. The hard part. 

The next part could be easy. It could be so _easy,_ if only Draco would let him. If only.

But then Draco was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, long coat swishing around his heels as he stepped off the porch and was engulfed by the night. Harry stood at the door, watching in a daze until the other man was nothing but a speck of blonde under the grey, sodium moonlight. Nothing but a stir against the churning shadows of the trees.

*

Harry couldn’t sleep. He laid awake for hours after Draco left, sprawled on top of his sheets and watching the trees make patterns on his ceiling, feeling completely deflated and uncomfortably sober. He felt restless all over, like his skin couldn’t stop prickling and his chest was on fire.

He thought more than once about going downstairs and reopening his Floo for the first time in months so he could call Luna and ask her to come over. She would know what to do. She would help talk him down and stroke his hair and tell him everything was going to be okay, and he’d believe her. He also thought about calling Hermione, but calling Hermione would mean calling Ron, and Harry couldn’t talk about these things with him. He couldn’t talk about boy problems.

 _Boy problems._ That’s what these were. Twenty-two years old and Harry was having boy problems. But putting it that way sounded so much cheaper, so much flimsier than he felt they should be. These feelings felt solid and blazing and rooted so deep in his chest it was almost like they’d been there all his life. _Maybe they have,_ he thought fuzzily. 

Maybe all this time—buried deep under dense layers of hatred and frustration and war—maybe Harry had known this was a possibility. Maybe he’d hoped. But he hadn’t gotten a chance to explore any of that. He hadn't gotten a chance to explore anything, really; his mind had been on one track, and Draco had been an obstacle on that track. 

Now, he felt like a destination.

Harry sat up on his elbows, gaze refocusing on the dark, jagged shapes of his bedroom. Phoebe was curled at the end of the bed, her chest rising and falling slowly, rhythmically. 

She was at the center of all of this, Harry thought. Without her, he and Draco may never have seen each other again. Their paths might have never crossed in the tangled, clumsy, mysterious way that they did. Without her, Draco would’ve been nothing but a bitter, faded memory lingering at the back of Harry’s mind.

 _But how?_ How had she known? How had she turned the right corner in the middle of a thick, wild forest and found Draco waiting for her on the other side? And how had she known to keep going back?

Harry dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, watching fireworks of color burst on the backs of his eyelids. He needed to talk to Hermione. If anyone had the ability to answer those questions, it was her. 

Harry didn’t care if it was nearly one in the morning; he hauled himself out of bed, the floorboards frigid and stiff under his feet, and grabbed the first jumper he could find before staggering downstairs, not bothering to turn on the lights. He hadn’t used the Floo in close to a year, so grabbing the small terracotta pot of powder off the mantle and sprinkling it into the grate felt wildly unnatural. The flames plumed up in a blazing flurry of green, then sank back down to a slow flicker so Harry could stick his head in. 

“Hermione?” he asked through flames when his best friends’ living room came into view fuzzily. It was dark, just barely lit by the grey wash of moonlight through the windows; there were shoes piled in front of the door, blankets thrown carelessly across their familiar Chesterfield sofa, books stacked atop their thick Persian rug. Evidence of what had probably been a warm, quiet evening, not unlike Harry’s.

It was silent for a long moment, the room completely still. Then, soft enough that Harry had to strain his ears, footsteps sounded from somewhere in the apartment. 

“Harry?” came Hermione’s hushed, gravelly voice, followed by a lamp flicking on and the appearance of her bare feet in front of the fireplace. Her legs bent, and she came into full view, wild hair and oversized Chudley Cannons t-shirt and everything. “Harry, what’s going on? Is there an emergency? Why are you—”

“Not an emergency,” Harry cut her off. “I’m so sorry for waking you, I just—I really need something.”

Hermione’s eyes were wide and frazzled, her skin tinted slightly green from the light of the fire. “What could you possibly need at one in the morning that isn’t emergency related?”

“I need you to tell me your theory,” Harry said quickly, words coming out all jumbled and clumsy. 

“What theory?”

“The one about Phoebe. About why she’s been wandering off into Draco Malfoy’s backyard every morning.”

Hermione gave him a look. “This really couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?”

Harry shook his head, insistent but apologetic. “No, I’m sorry, I just—I _need_ you to tell me. Please. Or I might go do something incredibly stupid.”

“Jesus, Harry,” she sighed, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. “Just—give me a moment. Ron needs to be here.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. “What? Why?”

Hermione gave him another look, her gaze dangerous and testing, so Harry let it go. She stood up from the fireplace and disappeared from the room for a moment, her footsteps retreating down the hall and most likely to their bedroom, then she returned with her arm wound around the waist of a half-conscious Ron. Harry felt horrible—waking Ron up was like waking up a sleeping dragon, and someone was bound to get a mouthful of fire.

“Harry,” he announced blearily when Hermione dragged him down in front of the hearth. “Mate, I love you, but this is bloody ridiculous.”

“I know.”

“I feel like I should be mad at you.”

“I know.”

“Waking me up to talk about Malfoy, of all people?”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“I am.”

“Okay,” Hermione cut in, shutting them down. “Enough. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can all go back to sleep. Capiche?”

Harry nodded fervently. “Capiche.”

“Good.” She sat back on her heels. “Now, mind you, I could be very wrong, given it’s all based on speculation, but my theory is that Phoebe might potentially be your familiar.”

Harry’s breath caught in this throat. “My… what?”

“Your familiar,” Ron said tiredly. “They’re, like, semi-magical entities that latch onto wizards or witches and assist them with magic or guide them. They’re a bit rare, though, aren’t they, ‘Mione?”

“Very rare. They aren’t found in real life much, only in children's books or old wives’ tales. But I think it’s one of the only ways to explain her behavior.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked. “She’s been ‘assisting’ me by wandering into the Slytherins’ yard for the past three months?”

“Something like that,” Hermione confirmed. “Again, it’s only a theory, but familiars do everything for a reason, and the patterns you described to me just seemed a bit too on-the-nose to be coincidental. We think it’s possible that you and Draco have some sort of… magical link that only she could sense.”

“And even if she isn’t your familiar, you do have a way with animals,” Ron jumped in, and Harry couldn’t help but feel disconcerted with the fact that he and Hermione had clearly discussed this topic between themselves before. “You form bonds with them that are, like, unbreakable. Hedwig and Buckbeak could’ve easily been your familiars, too.”

“I’m lost,” Harry said weakly, heart slamming against his ribcage, their words spinning a hurricane in his head. They couldn’t possibly mean—

“We’re trying to say that your dog sensed Draco’s magic and was attracted to it,” Hermione explained simply. “She was the one to lead you over there in the first place, wasn’t she?”

“I… yes.”

“So, she must have known there was something important over there that was linked to you. Some _one_ important.”

Harry was stunned. “Are you saying that Draco and I… are, like, soulmates?”

“No,” Hermione said quickly, seeming to sense the panic in Harry’s voice. “No, nothing like that. There’s more nuance to it. I was thinking of it more like a magical parallelism—your life and Draco's life have been running alongside each other for years, but you’ve been separated by a vast gap of time and circumstance. Phoebe was acting as a bridge to that gap. Does that make sense?”

“No,” Harry said, his voice misty. “Not at all. But it also makes the most sense in the world.”

Despite her evident exhaustion, Hermione smiled softly. “Yeah,” she sighed. “Remember it’s only a theory, though. It’s very possible that Phoebe’s just a normal dog with an odd personality.”

“She’s always been a weird one,” Ron agreed, now leaning half his weight against Hermione’s shoulder, gaze unfocused. He had a reddish pillow crease cutting along one cheek, disrupting his splash of freckles.

“I don’t know,” Harry said as he turned this new slew of information over and over in his head, heart beating at the speed of light. “I like your theory better.”

Hermione’s eyes were kind and relieved. “We thought you might.”

“Thank you. For telling me.”

“Anytime, mate,” Ron said through a loud yawn, wobbling a bit in place and forcing Hermione’s grip to tighten. “You would’ve found out either way. ‘M surprised Luna didn’t pick up on it.”

“She probably did,” Harry reasoned. “She likes to let me figure things out for myself, though.”

“Which really means having us figure it out for you,” Hermione finished for him, her smile stretching. 

“Exactly.”

“Glad we could help.”

“You should go to bed now,” Harry told them. “Sorry, again. I really didn’t plan on calling you this late.”

Hermione shook her head. “Don’t apologise, you’re always welcome to pop into our fireplace. You should do so more often, really.”

“But at normal times,” Ron added meaningfully, pointing at him through the fire. 

“Normal times,” Harry promised. “No more one a.m. non-emergencies.”

“Good,” Ron grumbled.

“Goodnight, Harry,” Hermione said with one last smile.

“Goodnight,” Harry returned, and then he was pulling his head out of the fireplace and the flames were gone, leaving behind nothing but slow, crumbling blue embers.

His house felt suddenly quiet without their voices. Suddenly cold. The windows outside were completely black, lying in wait.

All Harry could think of was Draco.

 _You knew it,_ his mind whispered. _You knew it all along._

And part of him did know it. He did understand that what he and Draco had ran deeper than anything he could have imagined. That they had roots in places that were impossible to see from the surface. Roots that somehow found their way into Harry’s chest, weaving through his ribs and around his heart. 

_I knew it._

So, left without much of a choice, Harry did the only thing he could think of. He pulled on his coat and pushed outside into the nebulous night, headed straight for the tangled greenery of the North corner, thinking only of Draco, Draco, Draco. Thinking of his hair and his hands and his voice, of the way he’d said Harry’s name hours earlier. The way the syllables had fallen from his lips so easily, as if they’d been there on the tip of his tongue forever. As if he’d been waiting to say them forever.

The clearing that surrounded the Slytherins’ house was quiet when Harry finally made it there, picking twigs off his sleeves and feeling the soft, damp soil spring beneath his soles. It was almost completely dark—only one light was on in the old, crooked house, the one on the top floor that Harry instinctively knew belonged to Draco. 

He didn’t have a plan, of course. He never had plans, not ones that worked in his favour. But he knew he needed to be here. He knew it more than he’d ever known anything.

He picked up a rounded pebble near his shoe, weighing it in his hands as he squinted up at the window, a soft strip of orange skewing through the darkness and planting a seed on the fertile black sky. 

Then, before he could stop and change his mind, he wound his arm back and threw it.

* * *

Draco had been nineteen when he received his first death threat.

He’d been out of Azkaban for a year; his parole had just expired, he’d just been given a wand by the Ministry, the Manor had just been seized. His mother had just been admitted to the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo’s for suffering frequent, intense panic attacks. His father had been on his second year out of fifteen in Azkaban.

Draco had been alone. He’d never been alone before—he was without a home, without money. Without anyone on his side.

The Ministry had declared that they could provide housing to him for two months while he searched for a job and got back on his feet. “Housing” was a generous term, though; for those two months they’d stuck Draco in a room the size of a broom cupboard, with one window and one bed that was so frail it could barely support his weight. He’d still taken it— he didn’t exactly have any other options.

It had taken weeks for him to find a job, given that no one would hire him on Diagon because of his name. He’d been forced to turn his efforts into the Muggle world, a task that felt like tripping headfirst into a pool of freezing water. The Muggle world was a shock to his system. There had been so many forms to fill out, so many dotted lines to sign, so many numbers and instructions that Draco had nearly drowned in them. But he got a job, nevertheless, at a fast food joint ten minutes from Diagon and the neglected lodging house that he’d been shoved into. 

And it was fine, for a while. Loud and greasy and depressing, yes, but fine. Better than prison. Better than war. 

But then the death threats had started coming in. Envelopes had been stuffed into his mailbox, slipped under the crack in his door, dropped into his hands by owls as he walked through Diagon, head down and hood up. Everywhere he went they’d managed to find him, in every restaurant or grocer, on every street he turned down. 

The letters inside had been beyond vulgar, cursing his name, his family, his dignity. And he didn’t blame them.

 _You should be in prison,_ they said. _You never should have been let out._

_You should be chained up in the cell right next to your filthy father. You deserve to pay for what you’ve done._

_My daughter is dead because of you._

_My husband is dead because of you._

_My sister. My brother. My aunt. My uncle._

_You deserve to die, too._

He’d agreed with them. Every single one. He deserved more than he’d got. Much more.

But then another letter had arrived; one that was different from the others, scrawled on thick parchment and sealed with a purple wax stamp. 

_Are you getting them too?_ had been the only line. No address, no signature.

 _Yes,_ Draco had written back plainly, hoping with all his heart that he knew who he was responding to.

 _Theo’s cousin has a house in Cornwall. He and Greg have been getting them, too. We can get away from London until it all dies down, if you want,_ came the response a day later. _It’s up to you._

The following week, Draco had appeared on the front step of a duplex building in Cornwall, and Pansy had answered the door. The first thing she’d done was hug him; the second thing was, “Salazar, Draco, what are you wearing?”

“Muggle clothes,” Draco had sighed as she drew back, casting a forlorn look at his obnoxiously red uniform shirt. “I came straight from work.”

“How horrible,” she’d cooed, frowning and straightening his collar. “Theo might have something to lend you. Come inside, please.”

The house itself had been perfectly adequate, but to Draco it had been much more than that. It had multiple windows and beds that weren’t on the verge of collapse; it had a kitchen and a bathroom and a stocked fridge, and he felt like he’d stepped into heaven. There had been sleeping bags laid out in the living room and suitcases lined up along the walls, and Greg and Theo had been sitting in the middle of all of it, looking no worse for wear.

“You’ve been getting the letters, too?” Greg had asked Draco tiredly, the bags under his eyes making him look shadowed and bruised.

“Since last month.”

“We think it’s got to do with our wands,” Theo had said, rubbing his eyes and sounding twenty years older than Draco had last seen him. “The Ministry’s been tracking us. The letters have got to be from them. Ministry workers.”

“You think so?” Draco had asked gravely, dropping his small bag of clothing onto the floor and slumping down next to Greg on the squishy sofa. 

“I know so.” Theo had nodded. “It’s the only explanation—this is the third place I’ve moved, and they’ve managed to find me every time. Magical Law Enforcement are the only people who know my whereabouts, so it’s got to be them.”

“ _Our_ whereabouts,” Pansy had corrected. 

“Right. Our whereabouts.”

Draco had never felt more sick in his life. “Can’t we just report the threats? Make them stop?”

The look Theo gave him had been exhausted and beaten down, like all the life had been drained from his body. “We can’t report them to MLE if MLE are the ones sending them.” 

“There’s got to be a way,” Pansy had insisted. “The Ministry isn’t _that_ fucked up, is it?”

“Even if there was a way, do you honestly think they’d listen to us?” Theo had challenged, holding his arms out. “We’re not exactly friendly faces over there.”

“Yes, but—”

“He’s right,” Greg had spoken up suddenly. “They can’t help us right now. Even if we did manage to find someone who was the least bit willing to file a report for us, it would have to pass through a hundred different levels of verification until someone actually did something. There’s no point.”

“So what the fuck do we do?” Draco had demanded.

Greg had looked dangerously nauseous, his gaze unfocused and skin tinged green. “We stop using magic.”

So they’d stopped. Completely. 

The first month had been the hardest; Draco felt empty and exhausted during the day, but couldn’t fall asleep at night no matter how hard he tried. He could feel his magic running like liquid fire through his veins, begging to be used, burning up his insides—but he refused. They’d ended up spending the whole summer in Cornwall, roaming the oddly constructed neighbourhoods and taking walks down long, tourist-infested strips of beach, trying to ignore the humming of their bones. It was the first summer Draco had ever got sunburned. 

It got better after that. In August, they moved to an old townhouse in Dublin after Theo had announced his cousin would be moving back into the house in Cornwall. “It was my aunt’s,” Greg explained as he’d pushed the door open and lugged their bags inside. “Haven’t seen her in ages, but she won’t mind us staying here.” That was true—they’d stayed in Dublin for nearly a year without hearing a peep from any of Greg’s family, immediate or extended. They didn’t hear from any of their families, really, least of all Draco’s.

Except, during month ten of staying in Dublin, a wizard that Draco vaguely recognized had walked into the cafe he was waiting tables at, taken one look at him, and walked right back out. That same night, a thick, cream-coloured envelope slipped under the crack of their front door.

_All the traitors in one place? Now you’re just teasing us._

They moved back to England the next day. 

For the next two years, the four of them lived like nomads, travelling from city to city, house to house, never staying long enough to be recognised, never using magic. They worked at any and every place they could find, taking jobs as busboys and cashiers and grocers, scraping together their savings to pay their rent and keep their stomachs full.

It had been hard. Excruciatingly hard, and Draco had never felt less like himself than he did during that endless period of drudgery. He had begun to forget what magic felt like; how it sent static through his fingertips and tasted sweet on his tongue. How it made him feel powerful and untouchable. How it tied him down to a family that ruined his life, other peoples’ lives. How it isolated him from the rest of the world.

Magic was a double-edged sword, and he was learning that more and more everyday.

But, then—

_“What if I told you I could give your magic back?”_

—Potter happened.

Ending up in Bedfordshire had been a stroke of good luck amid their scramble between dwellings and 40-hour workweeks—it was the first house in nearly three years they hadn’t needed to pay for. It was the first house that was so removed from the wizarding world that it was practically an oasis. Walking through the front door all those months ago had felt like surfacing from a grimy pool of anxiety and hardship, and the house had wrapped around them like a warm blanket. For once in his life, Draco had felt absolutely sure that everything was going to be okay. 

“Why haven’t we been staying here forever?” he’d asked Pansy as he stood in the backyard the first day they moved in, enveloped by swathes of green and yellow, the smell of damp grass and rosemary drifting idly with the breeze.

“Because we didn’t know any better,” Pansy had sighed wistfully, her hair fluttering in the wind. 

“We should have known better.”

“I know.”

Bedfordshire felt like fate. _Potter_ felt like fate. 

Draco didn’t normally believe in such things, but it was hard not to when he was living smack dab in the middle of a fairytale. It was especially hard not to when, fifteen minutes until two in the morning, something sharp pinged off of Draco’s bedroom window, and he knew exactly who had thrown it.

“Potter,” Draco said, sliding the panel up and peering down into the hazy darkness at the dark, windblown figure he would recognise anywhere. “What on Earth do you want?”

“To talk to you,” Harry answered, raising his voice slightly so Draco could hear him.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Yes. Can you come down?”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “We can’t talk from here?”

Harry huffed a little, his breath coming out grey. “Just come down, Malfoy.”

“How did you even know I was awake?”

There was silence. The night breeze was sharp and cold, stinging Draco’s bare forearms. 

Then, “I just knew.”

A shiver spilled over Draco’s shoulders and down his spine. Harry’s face looking up at him was earnest and pleading, the orange light from Draco’s window casting soft lines over his skin.

Softly, Draco said, “I’ll be down in a moment,” even though he knew that the minute he stepped onto his back porch, there was no turning back.

But he didn’t want to turn back. Not yet, anyway.

*

Harry looked quite ridiculous standing in the backyard wearing flannel trousers and a dark jumper, hardly dressed for the weather, but then again he always looked ridiculous. It was his thing. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, only pausing at the sound of the back door closing behind Draco.

“Hi,” Draco said, stopping at the top step of the porch.

“Hi,” Harry replied, gaze bright in the churning darkness. He was fiddling with the sleeves of his coat, tugging at them in a way that was almost nervous, except he was Harry Potter and Harry Potter didn’t get nervous.

Unsure where to go from there, Draco wrapped his arms around his torso and leaned half his weight against the chipped banister post. “So,” he started.

“So,” Harry echoed breathily, mouth twitching a bit.

“Are you going to keep repeating after me, or do you actually have something to say?” 

Harry’s back straightened, fingers pulling the hems of his sleeves taut. “No, I do have something to say. I just—” He stopped, frustrated.

“You just what?” 

His lips thinned and he looked away. He was nervous. “I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted eventually, squinting against a slight brush of wind. Not looking at Draco.

“Well,” said Draco, “I would try to help you, but I don’t know what exactly ‘this’ is.”

Harry’s eyes flicked back to Draco’s, and then their eye contact was so intense that Draco almost wished he’d look away again and make it stop. 

“This,” Harry emphasized, gesturing between them like that would explain everything. “Us.” 

Draco’s stomach dipped. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he dismissed, but his tone was slipping out of his control. “There is no _us._ ”

“You’re wrong.”

Draco stared, pulse quickening in his ears. “I don’t understand.”

Harry stepped forward onto the bottom stair, gaze now fixed steadily on Draco. His hand was gripping the railing, knuckles painted ivory, evidence of his present anxiety. “There’s always been an ‘us’, Draco. You know that,” he said quietly, and now he was the one who was wrong, because Draco certainly did _not_ know that. That seemed like a pretty fucking large piece of information for him to not know.

“I don’t—”

“Since the day we met,” Harry continued, taking another step up so there was barely a foot between them. “Do you remember the day we met?”

There was something squeezing Draco’s lungs. “Yes,” he said, refusing to let his voice waver. “On the train to Hogwarts. You—”

“Madam Malkin’s,” Harry interrupted again, and suddenly he was only one step down from Draco. Inches away. The closest they’d been in a long, long time. “We met at Madam Malkin’s. You don’t remember?”

“You do?” Draco asked, barely a whisper.

“I do. I don’t know how, but I do.” 

Then the hand that Harry wasn’t using to steady himself on the railing was touching Draco’s wrist, but Draco didn’t know how it had gotten there or how long it'd been there. It felt like forever. 

“Draco,” Harry said, so soft he almost missed it, “I want you to know that I’m about to do something tremendously stupid. Maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

Draco felt his lips quirk up as he replied shakily, “That’s a hard record to break,” but then Harry’s cold hand was on the back of his neck and they were kissing, and Draco’s words died on his tongue. Their noses bumped clumsily, Harry’s glasses digging into Draco’s cheek and definitely leaving a mark, but Draco had never cared less about anything in the world because Harry Potter was kissing him. _Harry Potter was kissing him._

Somehow, every other triumph of the world seemed to crumble into ash with those words. 

Draco broke first, pulling his head back and batting his eyelashes open while his heartbeat thumped in the floorboards below his feet. His hands were on Harry’s collarbone now, and he hadn’t the faintest clue as to when they’d got there. He didn’t move them, staring now at the dark cashmere that was wrinkled under his fingertips.

“You’re wearing my jumper,” he said breathlessly after Harry had opened his eyes, dazed and glittering. 

Harry looked down at Draco’s hands, like he was surprised they were there. “Oh,” he said faintly. “Right. I am. Do you mind?”

“Do I mind,” Draco repeated senselessly. “Do I _mind_? Honestly, Potter.”

“What?” Harry’s eyes were wide, and he was slowly pulling away now, which was not Draco’s intention at all. “I can take it off, if it’s bothering you.”

“No! No,” Draco stopped him, tightening his grip on the soft, worn collar. “Don’t take it off. I mean—eventually I’d like you to take it off, someday, but not now. I like it on you. It looks good. You… look good.”

Harry stared at him. “You like it on me.”

“Yes.”

“You think I look good.”

“Yes,” Draco repeated, feeling his ears go hot. “Why are we clarifying this?”

“I just…” Harry’s thumb was resting on Draco’s cheek, fingers holding to the back of his neck. He moved, brushing the pad of his thumb up Draco’s cheekbone. “I can’t really believe this is happening. That you’re letting me do this.”

Draco felt everything inside him soften. “I can’t either,” he said quietly, leaning into Harry’s touch. “You’re right, you know. That was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Yeah?” Harry asked, breaking into that horrible smile of his that turned Draco’s insides into goo.

“Yeah.” Draco’s fingers curled into the fabric of Harry’s jumper. _His_ jumper. “I think, maybe, you should do it again.”

Harry’s smile stretched, the little corner parts of his eyes creasing delicately, like silk, and his other hand came up to cradle the side of Draco’s head. “I think so, too.” 

And then he kissed Draco again, and Draco’s world turned green.

****

* * *

**Five Months Later**

* * *

****

Ron and Hermione’s wedding was held on Harry’s orchard, because—once again—Harry was a spineless bastard, and he couldn’t possibly think of a better venue.

They exchanged vows under an archway made out of two blossoming apple trees whose branches were wound together loosely, shaking leaves down onto the happy couple as they slid shimmering gold rings onto each other’s fingers. Harry cried a bit and squeezed Draco’s hand; Draco gave him a handkerchief and told him to “get ahold of yourself, you great oaf,” and then Harry laughed, and his best friends were married, and everything was okay. 

The ceremony was small, the reception even smaller; only immediate family and close friends stayed behind after the festivities to eat dinner and cut into the tall, wobbling wedding cake that Molly had insisted on baking herself. The lawn was dotted with mismatched tables and chairs, some of them shoved together to make larger tables; fairy lights and dark red streamers of tulle draped from tree to tree and along the banister of Harry’s porch, cloaking the whole evening in an effervescent sort of dream. Harry’s job as best man was to float from table to table making small talk with the guests, which wasn’t an issue given that ninety-five-percent of the guest list was made up of Weasleys. The Slytherins had also secured invitations, but fortunately enough, Harry didn’t have to worry about them getting into spats with any select redheads because Luna and Neville managed to keep them occupied the entire time. 

“...and this one’s name is Hecate,” Harry overheard Luna explaining to Pansy as the two of them leaned over the chicken coop, straw getting stuck to their fancy robes, while Neville was busy in the garden showing Greg and Theo how to water tulips correctly. 

It was, in no uncertain terms, an evening to behold. 

Before cutting the cake, Harry stood up on one of the rickety tables and announced that he was giving a toast, because that’s what he’d seen best men do at weddings in Muggle films. His speech was all over the place, but people laughed, and there were tears in Ron’s eyes by the end, so Harry figured he’d done pretty good; Draco also held onto one of his ankles the whole time so he didn’t slip off the table and break his neck, and that was pretty good, too. 

“Was that scripted?” Ginny asked him curiously from across the table after he’d sat back down, her chin in her hands, bright hair falling in ringlets around her face.

“Not even a little bit,” he told her, and she grinned. 

The evening went on in a whirl of music and laughter as the sun began dipping lower and lower into the pale cobalt sky. Someone had managed to conjure a slightly out-of-tune piano in the center of the clearing, and now people were taking turns playing clunky renditions of Sinatra, music notes filling the air. Harry danced once with Ginny, twice with Luna, and eventually managed to drag Draco onto the makeshift dance floor and discovered that he was, more or less, a horrible dancer.

“You’re even worse than I am,” Harry said into his ear, astonished, to which he received a valiant “fuck off” and a sharp twirl that nearly sent them flying into Bill and Fleur.

Later, after the dancing had slowed and the piano had been replaced with an enchanted gramophone that played real music, Harry excused himself to the bathroom and returned to find Draco missing. Hermione and Ron were both sitting on the steps of the back porch, clearly exhausted, Hermione’s heels discarded to the side and Ron’s tie undone around his neck. 

“You two done dancing for the night?” Harry asked as he stepped down between them.

“I think I’m done dancing for my entire life,” Ron replied as he slumped against the banister, long legs sticking awkwardly off the steps.

“Seconded,” Hermione said, her earrings clinking as she tipped her head back. “Do I still have feet? It feels like I don’t have feet anymore.”

“You still have feet,” Harry assured, smiling. “Have either of you seen Draco anywhere? I lost track of him.”

Ron’s eyebrows jumped up. “How’d you manage that? He’s been attached to your hip all day.”

“He has not.”

“He has too!”

“We haven’t seen him,” Hermione cut in, sitting up on her elbows. “I did see Phoebe wander off in that direction a few minutes ago, though, and knowing her…” She trailed off, pointing past Harry’s shoulder to the northernmost part of the orchard, where the red streamers and string lights narrowed down into a path that veered off into the surrounding woodland.

Harry knew exactly where she’d gone. “Thank you,” he told Hermione before squeezing her shoulder gratefully and stepping fully off the porch, purposefully missing the last two stairs. It took him longer than necessary to weave through the dispersed congregation of tables and guests, people stopping him every few steps and telling him what a beautiful home he had or what a funny speech he gave. Eager to get away from the crowd and find out what exactly Draco was doing, Harry smiled and nodded his way to the edge of the clearing where he could surreptitiously duck onto the path. He could still hear voices and laughter even after the clearing had disappeared from sight, seeming to follow him through the tangled trees and down the well-worn trail. 

It was that time of the evening where the sun was just present enough to slant through gaps between the mossy boughs and dapple the ground, lighting up the entire path with little pools of gold. Harry kept walking, unsure how far Phoebe or Draco had gone, until the slow cadence of music was replaced with the soft sounds of leaves rustling and birds tittering in the canopy above. He followed the path all the way to the dilapidated wooden staircase that sloped down towards the stream, stopping at the top to take stock of the landscape. 

Then Harry saw him. 

He was sitting at the bottom of the slope on the little curved bridge, his elbows crossed over the middle beam, chin resting atop his arms. Someone had wound a miniature string of lanterns around the wooden posts, and they were twinkling faintly in the dusky lavender light, reflecting off the glassy surface of the stream and making Draco look like some sort of glowing forest nymph, gilded with flecks of bronze around the crown of his head. Phoebe was perched silently next to him, and his gaze was unfocused as he absently stroked her pelt. Harry wished he had a camera so he could freeze this moment in time forever, wanting it stamped on his mind for years to come.

“Hey,” he said instead when he reached the bridge, boards creaking under his shoes as he stepped up. 

Draco looked up and around, the glazed look in his eyes sharpening at the sight of Harry. “Hey,” he replied, equally as soft. He’d taken off his outer robes and folded them into a small, neat pile, his socks and shoes sitting on top so he could dip his toes into the water. 

“Everything alright?” Harry asked, lowering himself down next to Draco and crossing his legs. “I lost you back there.”

“Everything’s fine,” Draco assured, lips twitching up as Harry immediately reached for his hand and slotted their fingers together. “I needed some air, is all. Your ridiculous animal just happened to follow me out here.”

“Yeah, she does that sometimes,” Harry said, smiling knowingly. “Hope it doesn’t bother you.”

“Mm,” Draco hummed, playing along. “I think I’ve gotten quite used to it, but thank you for the concern.”

Harry’s smile widened, but he ducked his head down so Draco couldn’t see it and poke fun at him. “You’re very welcome.”

They lulled into a natural silence, broken only by the lazy gurgle of the stream and the faint thump of Phoebe’s tail against the wood. There was a cricket chirping somewhere in the dark emerald thickets, even though the sun hadn’t fully settled into its place beyond the trees.

“What are you thinking about?” Harry asked after a while, running his thumb down Draco’s palm and over his pale wrist. 

Draco sighed gently, the sound stirring the air in front of them. “I’m thinking about how bizarre this all is.”

“Bizarre?”

He nodded. “I just… can’t get over the fact that I’m here right now. With you.” He glanced up, looking almost shy. “Draco from Hogwarts didn’t exactly picture himself ending up as Harry Potter’s date to Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley’s wedding.”

“Draco from Hogwarts was a git,” Harry reminded him kindly. “But you’re right. Harry from Hogwarts didn’t exactly picture it either.”

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Draco said, squeezing Harry’s hand tighter. “To think that we were mortal enemies less than a decade ago.”

Harry snorted lightly. “Don’t flatter yourself. I may have been your mortal enemy, but you weren’t mine.”

“Ah.” Draco grimaced, gaze straying to his forearm. “Right. I forgot about him.”

“Liar,” Harry said, leaning against Draco’s shoulder heavily. “Let’s not talk about him right now, yeah? I’m enjoying myself.”

Draco sighed again, softer. “Sorry. Weddings have strange effects on me. It’s quite inconvenient, really.”

“It’s fine.” Harry lifted their clasped hand and pressed his lips to the back of Draco’s. “Don’t apologise.”

“We should talk about him someday. About all of it.”

“Someday,” Harry agreed, “just not today.”

“Not today,” Draco echoed quietly, gaze fixed on the water below their dangling feet. It was moving slowly, quietly, like it had all the time in the world to get where it needed to go. Around it the trees quivered, wayward branches swaying to the steady rhythm of the stream.

“Are you happy?” Harry asked, breaking the serene near-silence.

Draco lifted his gaze. “With what?”

“With where you are.”

Silence. Then, “Incredibly.” There was a soft rustle, and suddenly Phoebe was laying her head restlessly across Draco’s lap, like she couldn’t possibly get close enough to him. Harry could sympathise with her on that front. Draco smiled at her and reached down to scratch between her ears. “I think your dog might be in love with me.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry said, and his heart sped up, drumming a soft, familiar melody against his ribs. “She’s not the only one.”

Draco jerked his head, eyes wide. “Harry,” he said, hitched.

The sun-soaked warmth of the wood beneath Harry’s legs began to spread, seeping up to his chest and outward towards his fingertips. “Draco.”

Draco’s wine-stained lips were parted, his throat working. “You barely know me.” 

Harry knew what he meant by that. _You can’t love me._

“I know you well enough,” Harry assured, tilting his head slightly to press a kiss into the fabric of Draco’s shoulder. Then, remembering the words that had been rattling around his brain for nearly a year, he added, “It only takes a moment to decide you love something.” 

Draco’s brow creased disbelievingly, juxtaposed by the cherry-red blush blotching across his cheeks. “Oh? Based on whose merit?”

“Luna’s.”

“ _Luna’s._ Of course, how didn’t I guess that.”

Harry thumped him in the arm. “I’m trying to tell you something important, tosser. Be nice.”

“I haven’t said anything—”

“Jesus,” Harry said, rolling his eyes before hooking two fingers under Draco’s chin and planting a firm, silencing kiss on his stupid mouth. “You’re so lucky I put up with you.”

Draco flicked Harry’s knee as he pulled back, face a shade pinker. “I’m aware.”

“So act like it!”

“You’re the worst,” Draco informed him. “And I love you, too.”

Harry grinned, feeling warmth unfurl in his stomach. “I thought you might. We should get back.”

“We just got here.”

“No, _I_ just got here. You’ve been here for ages.”

Draco tugged on his hand, sticking out his bottom lip. “Five more minutes.”

“Draco—”

“ _Five more minutes._ They’ll survive without you, I promise.”

Phoebe let out a short, pleading whimper from Draco’s lap, as if she was also reluctant to get back. Harry gave her a scolding look for siding with the enemy, then succumbed to their insistent gazes with a leveling sigh. “Fine. Five more minutes.”

It was worth the smile on Draco’s face. “Take your shoes off,” he instructed, knocking their ankles together. “The water’s warm.”

“I highly doubt that,” Harry replied, but took his shoes off anyway and placed them next to Draco’s pile, tucking his balled-up socks into the openings. Draco squeezed his fingers as he scooted forward onto the edge and dipped his toes into the stream, expecting ice. But the water was warm. 

“Told you,” Draco said smugly, and all around them the evening buzzed with whispered promises of darkness, water turning amber as the sky sank slowly into its velvet cradle of night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > (for trigger warning) mentions of death threats are located below the page break after the sentence, "before he could stop and change his mind, he wound his arm back and threw it." a good spot to pick back up is at the sentence "for the next two years, the four of them lived like nomads..." hope that helps!
> 
> thanks for reading!! <3 

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of H/D Cluefest and the creator is currently undercover. You can follow the fest at our [Tumblr](https://hd-cluefest.tumblr.com/). Creators will be unmasked on the 15th April.


End file.
